Audrey
by amacma
Summary: What if Jack Bauer was taken to Seattle Grace and met Dr. Teddy Altman there?
1. Chapter 1

_CHAPTER ONE_

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"Dr. Altman!", the voice of one of the assistants ripped her unpleasantly out of her well-deserved break. Was there no-one else around? After a ten hour marathon in the operating theatre she _had_ deserved not to be disturbed in the only free minutes she had, before going back to check on the MRTs of her patient. It had been a serious mistake to come anywhere close to the Emergency Room to have a break.

The assistant who had called her name before finally caught up with her.

"Where is Dr. Bailey?", Teddy asked, biting in her sandwich, implicitly telling here that whatever was going on here wasn't really her business.

"I already called for her but she didn't answer. Please, we need somebody or this guy's gonna die!"

As she looked up from her sandwich, she found the assistant holding up her hands - the sterile gloves smeared with blood all over. So this was really serious. "What do we have?" They both started rushing back the corridor.

"A man, mid 40s, seriously beaten up or... whatever, two gunshot wounds in the abdomen."

"What do you mean by _whatever_?", Teddy hissed at her. She hated inaccurate reports.

The assistant was pretty lost for words how to describe what she'd seen. "Just have a look.", she stammered and pulled the curtains open.

Another assistant was just cutting the man's clothes off, while the paramedics who had brought them here still pressed gauze firmly onto the blood-covered abdomen.

Teddy rushed over to the bed and put on gloves before she shone a light into his left eye to test his light reflex. There was no part of this body which one could touch without putting a sterile glove on - everything seemed to be covered in blood. His face was bloody from being beaten up, his checks and temples slowllen black. Probably a broken cheek bone, broken nose,... she couldn't catalogue all of his injuries now.  
Shifting her attention to the two gunshot wounds, she ordered another two bags of blood and yelled at the assistant to get them an operating room ready.

"We couldn't stabilize him on the way here.", the paramedic mentioned as he cautiosly lifted the gauze from one of the wounds to let Teddy have a look. The bullet was stuck in his body.

"Where did you pick him up?"

"At the harbour, fifteen minutes ago. Two harbour workers saw him falling over the railing of a freighter after being shot. They pulled him out of the water."

"Was he underwater for long?"

"No, he was even barely counscious when we got there."

Teddy looked up. "Conscious?", she asked. That was hardly believeable, juding by the man's injuries.

The man couldn't believe it himself. "I'm not jokin' you."

"Dr., the operating room is ready.", the assisstant told her, while Teddy still examined the shot wounds. She gave him a thirty percent chance of surviving, as she handed the gauze back to the paramedic, to press on the wound. "Bring him there", she murmured, "I'll get ready."

* * *

 _One day later_

"This almost feels like Baghdad.", Teddy whispered, looking at their patient. Standing at the window to the room in the intensive care unit, next to Owen. The stranger was his patient by now.

"You did a great job", Owen silently said. He tried his best not to let it sound... he couldn't even put it in words. At some points, he was thinking three times of every word that he'd say to her, for she might misunderstand. "Getting those bullets out was no easy job.", he remarked, looking at the x-rays that they'd made to locate the bullets. She had been in the operating room for three hours already when his shift had started and when he had taken over.

"Like I said - reminds me of old times.", she smiled at him and nodded at the patient. "What are his chances?"

Owen shrugged. "Hard to say. Fifty fifty? Did you see his other injuries?"

"Yeah, I did." Teddy bit her lower lip. By now, she'd had the time to read through the complete lst. The form which they usually used for their diagnosis hadn't been large enough. Seven broken ribs, numerous other broken bones, includng his left arm and leg, nose and cheekbone, bruises and cuts alll over his body, most likely from being lashed, several second-degree burns, obviously somebody had tried to lit him on fire with an accelerant. This man was clearly a victim of unspeakable violence. "What did the police say?"

"They took a picture of his face but... that won't really help, I guess, the way he looks like. They said they'd come back in a few days."

"Alright. Shall we go in?"

They put on their face masks and went in.  
Just like expected, their patient was awake - still confused from the anesthetic, but on the verge of waking up.

Owen examined the bandages around the man's abdomen. No more blood oozing through. A good sign. Also, his blood pressure was quite steady - no internal bleedings for now.

Teddy went over to the left side of the bed. "Does that look familiar to you?", she asked, pointing at one of the tattoos on the man's arms. "Could be an ex-soldier. I saw it yesterday in the OR"

Owen had a look at it. "Could be... I'm not sure... infantry maybe?" The rest of the man's arms were bandaged, so no more hints avaiable.

Teddy shrugged. "I dunno. I think I've seen something like this before, in the army."

Owen took a deep breath. Even though it was not that important, he actually wanted to find out who the guy was. He had carried nothing on him - except for the clothes he wore. "Let's give it a try...", he murmured and leant over the bed, looking into the half open eyes of their confused patient.

"Soldier!", he said - loud, into the man's face.  
There was an immediate reaction.  
For a few moments, the man's view centered on him and got a little clearer and more focused. He showed a reaction upon being called a soldier.

Owen looked to Teddy, who only nodded at him to go on. The practice of yelling at an intensive care patient was not common at the Seattle Grace - but where they had been - in Iraq - it had almost been their standard procedure to wake them up and get them out of the intensive care as quickly as possible, to make room for the next patient.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

He couldn't see clearly - that frightened him. A man leant over him, yelling at him... something.

English?

Was it really English was this man spoke? ... Must have been the first English word in months.

They guy was asking him for his name and rank.

He tried to focus his view a little more. Was it just a trick of Cheng's men? Was he still in China, and were they playing with his mind now, making him blieve that he was back home? Must be... although the room, was quite okay. They copied a whole US hospital room to fool him... expensive, but well built.

 _Soldier! Your name and rank!_

He wouldn't answer. No way. No matter how much Cheng's trick had improved, he'd not fall for them.  
He lay back and closed his eyes for a moment. At least he felt no pain. They must have given him something. When he looked down on his body, he even saw the bandages around his arms and torso.  
Nice trick of Cheng. One he actually liked. Well... making him believe he was in a US hospital inlcuded treating all his wounds. That was just part of the game, he reminded himself. It was nothing that they had done for him because they actually cared about him. For months, they had let him rot in this prison cell. They hadn't treated any of his wounds even once. Not even when they had started to suppurate and got infected.

Again he heard that man's voice asking for his name and rank.  
Damn it, they knew his name and rank. No need to answer this.  
He focused his view on the man. It was hard, but after a while he could see him almost clearly. It was a caucasian, blonde haired man, probably in his forties. He didn't look like one of Cheng's men. Where would Cheng get somebody like him from?

"Come on, this is senseless. It was too early.", Teddy murmured after she had watched Owen's fourth try to talk to their patient.

Owen already wanted to try if for a fifth time - but he knew she was right. He couldn't overstress that man after all he'd been trough. Maybe tomorrow.  
He followed his patient's view, he wearily tried to turn his head after hearing another voice in the room.

Owen pushed himself away from the sickbed. "Yes, too early.", he murmured at Teddy. "Let's come back in the evening."

Right as she turned around to leave the room, Teddy felt a touch at her arm. She turned around and looked down at their patient, who had grabbed her left arm. The fingers of his bandaged right hand closed around her forearm.  
"Owen", she silently said to order him back here. Finally their patient showed some kind of reaction.

Surprised he looked down on the man who had acted like he wasn't even able to speak - that guy was actually even able to _move_.  
"He's saying something", Teddy whispered so silently that only Owen would hear it.

As she tried to rip her arm free from him, his grab only got harder. Angrily she tried it once mroe - remembering that there were severe burns beneath that bandage. How on earth did he manage to hold her like this?

Owen grabbed his bandaged arm and started to press against the bandage until he could take no more. With a wince he let go of her.

Teddy looked into his eyes, spellbound. She'd never seen a view like that. He wanted to tell her something, but he couldn't get any words out.

"Let's go, we're just confusing him and stressing him too much.", Owen softly guided her away.

As they were at the door, she looked back once more. Their patient's eyes were still on her, ripped wide open. He still stretched out his bandaged hand, trying to grab something that was far out of range: her.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"..dre..." was the only sound he had managed to say.  
He hadn't thought that speaking would be so hard, after only a few months of silence.

He had wanted to cry out her name, hold her back and ask her so many questions about what she was doing here and what this was all about.  
Audrey.  
She couldn't be in China... or could she?  
She wouldn't play along in Cheng's plan to fool him. Never.  
So maybe this wasn't China, after all?

He tried to say her name a few more times, to get his voice back.

He lay there, alone, staring at the door through which she'd left.

"Audrey", he finally managed to whisper. That single word was a like a prayer now.

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 _I always wondered how it would be if Jack Bauer met Teddy Altman... hope you enjoyed it! Please review!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Hi guys... first I thought I'd write a oneshot... but I couldn't. I fell in love with the story, so here it goes... Enjoy!_

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 _I have to find her._  
That thought was consuming his whole consciousness. Ever since the door had closed after her, he only thought about how to handle this situation: was it another trick of Cheng? To get a woman and make her look like Audrey? To fool him into telling her everythng they wanted to know?

It was time to get some closure. Once and for all he wanted to know what was going on here. He had to be one step ahead to survive this ordeal.  
Fine, he was in a hospital room. That could be anywhere. He didn't know for how long he had been in Chengs custody, but it must have been months. Maybe the were finally giving up on the concept of torture.  
Audrey... no, she would never act along.

Unwillingly, his thoughts drifted away from his developing plans, back to the memories that had kept him alive during the past months. He could still see her, standing out there in the morning sun, waiting for him to come back after taking that 'call' from Kim. It had been the last image that his eyes had seen before Chengs men had sedated and abducted him.

 _Focus._  
He snapped back into the present.  
Audrey was at reach - closer than to any time before in the past months.

He tried to move his legs. It worked... not perfectly, but enough to move. Arms. Fingers. Relieved, his body collapsed back into the bed, tired after only a few seconds of moving. He was exhausted already, but relieved that he could still move.  
It took him almost a minute to sit up in bed. Instantly, he felt sick. It was too early, he knew that too, but he just couldn't stay here not knowing where he actually was. Audrey had left the room, after that doctor had told her to leave him alone, she had only closed the door - noone had cared to lock it.  
As he found himself sitting at the bed, staring at the unlocked door, the urge to seek for freedom drove him through all the pain that he still felt. Those little aches... they were nothing, compared to what he had been through in the past months. That little pain of walking over there was nothing, compared to the prospect of finding the door unlocked.

Carelessly he ripped the IV out of his arm and the electrodes off his chest, taking care to switch off the annoying sound of the monitor next to him before detaching the cables. The back of his head still told him to be careful. This must be one of Chengs's tricks. But Audrey. Maybe it wasn't?

He grabbed the intravenous stand and pulled himself up from the bed. Immediately, his abdomen started to hurt. He tried to think back why, but the past days seemed like a big blur now.  
As he tried to hold his aching belly with his left arm he was only forced to let go after the first touch - the arm hurt even more than his abdomen.

Slowly he went towards the door, step by step. Those three yards felt like a mile.

He hoped for the door to still be open but the closer he got there, the bigger his fear grew that it was maybe locked.

Remembering that he only had one good hand to open the door he leant against the wall and pushed the IV stand away.

 _Please... be open,_ he prayed.  
The handle felt cold as the fingers of his right hand enclosed it.  
It was the first time in months that his fingers enclosed the door handle of his cell, with a prospect on freedom.

He took a deep breath and opened the door.

The rush out here was unbelieveable. Nurses, doctors, others, patients... it had been months since he'd last seen so many people.  
Nobody of them looked Chinese. They didn't even notice him first, all engrossed in conversations - actual conversations, about the plans that seemed to be made on the whiteboards on both sides of the hallway.

For a moment he even forgot the pain and stepped out into the hallway without holding on to anything.

FREEDOM.  
This was not one of Chengs plans... this was actual FREEDOM.  
Did he even remember how this felt like?  
At once, it overwhelmed him. He was free. This was not one of Cheng's sick tricks to get him talking.

FREEDOM. So this was how it felt like. He didn't even realize that a silent tear of happiness trickled down his cheeks. He had survived it. It was over.

"Sir?"

He also didn't realize the nurse who was standing right in front of him, looking concerned and afraid at the same time upon seeing a man in his shape standing out here.

Ever since his view had caught _her_ at the end of the hallway, he just couldn't turn away.

"Sir!", the nurse said again, louder, trying to judge what he was up to do. "Sir!", she called out.

He didn't even take notice.  
Clumsily he made one steps towards the one person who his eyes were centered on.

 _Audrey,_ he murmured and stretched out his hand to touch her, though she was at the other end of that endlessly long hallway.

The voices of the others got loud. More and more people rushed towards him. He noticed none of them counsciously.  
Focus. He had focused on her during all the bad times. Every time the pain set in, he closed his eyes and remembered who was still out there, waiting for him to return one day. She was the reason why had never given up, never given in to them and had refused to die.

Finally, Teddy also took notice of the happenings down the hallway. Their John Doe was standing out in the hallway, two fresh gunshot wounds in his abdomen, broken leg, arm and ribs... _He's going to collapse within the next few moments,_ she realized the moment she saw him.  
She started rushing towards him.

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 _Audrey,_ it was only a thought right now. She was coming over.

He stretched out his good arm once more and made another step towards here that made him stumble. One of the others caught him and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen.  
He was focused on the one an only thing his mind could think of right now.

"Audrey...", he finally managed to whisper before his knees gave in completely. He gladly let go of everything as he collapsed into her arms, his mind telling him that he had arrived back home, at the one place that he had always dreamt of.

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 _That was a shorter one, but longer ones are to follow... enjoy!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Teddy is still interested in finding out who her mysterious patient is... enjoy reading!_

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Teddy stood at the window to the room where their John Doe patient was. She had been watching him for quite some time, throughout the whole night shift which had otherwise been surprisingly quiet.  
4 a.m.  
It looked like he was asleep, the indications on all the monitors showing that his vital functions were steady.

She fought the urge to enter the room and talk to him. He should be left alone, given some time to sleep and to recover from whatever he had been through. Just half a day ago he had somehow managed to stand up and leave the room- which was still a mystery to her. She had never seen anyone who was recovering from severe gunshot wounds who was able to stand, let alone to walk, just a day after surgery. He must have been in severe pain, straining his body in that way. But something had made him leave the bed, if only to walk out of the room and look around.

Eventually, she returned to the station's office and sat down in front of the monitor that let her observe his vital functions from over here. After ten minutes she got restless. She checked her pager – no emergency case in sight. This was getting boring.  
And that was when she found herself secretly hoping to see a spike on one of the monitors, some little abnormality which would give her a reason to wake him up.

 _Damnit, don't be childish_ , she told herself, _be professional._  
It was one thing to be professional – but also a professional got curious from time to time. She really wanted to know what had happened to that man. She really wanted to know if she and Owen had been right, interpreting those parts of his army(?) tattoo, that they'd seen. And last, but not least she wondered who _Audrey_ was. He had been calling that name when he had fainted.

Another ten minutes later, she stood up and went back over to the window. He was lying in bed, looking almost peaceful, compared to the moment when she'd first seen him in the emergency room. They had shaved his beard – well, only to be able to fix the lacerations at his chin – and even cut his long-grown hair to make it easier to bandage his head. The cast to stabilize his broken nose covered a big part of his face. His left cheekbone and temple were bruised and swollen, the right side covered with smaller scratches.

 _Don't be childish,_ she still thought, but she couldn't hold back any longer, this night shift was too boring and lonely.  
Cautiously, not to make a sound, she opened the door and slipped inside the room. She could see him better now… slowly she went over to the bedside and looked down at the battered face. She looked at him, but yet she didn't know how he actually looked like. A policeman had been here yesterday and had taken a photo of his face, but he said it, too, that this photo wasn't going to help a lot in identifying that man.

She bowed down and looked at the tattoo on his right biceps. Two crossed swords cradling a fist. That had to be an army symbol, Owen was right about this. It looked like a ranger symbol.

And then he suddenly stirred.

Teddy stepped back in an instant – first, because he had sensed her presence and she wanted to get out of his comfort zone and secondly, because she was afraid that he could grab her again, like he had done the day before.

His eyes flew open and they ended up staring directly into each other's eyes in the dim light.

 _Audrey,_ he whispered, his voice shaking.

Teddy pulled a chair over to her and sat down, three feet away from the bed, in a safe distance. _Who is Audrey?,_ she asked.

He lifted his right arm and tried to reach out for her, but he didn't get very far. _Audrey,_ he whispered again, _are you…._ He couldn't find any words.

 _My name is Teddy Altman, I am your doctor,_ she silently spoke. She felt like she needed to set things right – he was obviously mistaking her for a woman called Audrey.

As he heard her words, his outstretched arm slackened.  
Teddy could see how the initial excitement of seeing her gave way to pure disappointment. He blinked his eyes to see her more clearly.

It was really not Audrey.  
The differences were little, but they were there. She wore scrubs, had her hair bound together, wore no make-up and her voice sounded different, somehow.

While he was staring at her in disbelief, none of them said a word.  
Teddy saw the hurt in his eyes, as he realized that she wasn't the one who he had hoped for.  
Yet she still wanted to talk to him. _Who are you?,_ she asked him.

He didn't answer.

 _What's your name?_ She repeated her question, but he obviously didn't want to talk. She tried it in Spanish _¿Cómo te llamas?_

Jack didn't feel like answering. He had been silent for so many months that he now also didn't want to talk. Even though he saw that she was a doctor and she obviously cared about him, he didn't trust her. He had lost his trust in anyone.

Teddy feared that she wouldn't get any further. No matter if he understood what she said or not, he didn't want to talk. He even avoided looking at her.  
 _Who is Audrey?_ she asked him.

At once, his eyes were back. _None of your concern,_ he spoke under his breath.

 _It is of my concern,_ Teddy cut in, _Was she with you, when that happened to you? Could she still be in danger?_ It was standard procedure to ask these kind of questions.

He slightly shook his head. _No._

 _Do you want me to call her, to tell you that you're here?_

A million thoughts shot through his head. Seeing Audrey again? Calling her, just to come here…? He had totally forgotten how easy life could be, sometimes. She was just a call away.  
But then again, he feared that being with him would bring her into grave danger.

 _How did I get here?_

 _I wanted to ask you the same._ Teddy sighed. _You were brought here yesterday, an ambulance picked you up at the pier, you fell overboard a ship after being shot at._

Jack tried to think back. It was all a blur right now.  
An uneasy feeling came over him. He was starting to feel watched, followed and haunted. Some of his memories came back, telling him that the Chinese must still be after him after he had fled.

Terry saw that he didn't want to talk to her. She gave it a last try. _What's your name?_

He slightly shook his head. No, he wouldn't tell her. It could only lead somebody back on his trace. Damnit, he was in a hospital, they could be close to finding him already. It wasn't that hard to get information about the people delivered to hospital with wounds like his.

 _When can I leave?_ He silently asked the doctor that looked so much like Audrey.

Of all questions, this was the only one Teddy hadn't expected. _What?!_ She stood up from her chair and went to the foot end of the table.  
His eyes constantly followed her, as she took the papers and started to read the list of injuries to him. _Three weeks, minimum,_ she added. _You better sleep now._

Jack sank back into the pillow. That sounded like a death sentence.

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A short message on her pager had notified her – thank god. So didn't have to face these people without any preparation. She had never liked to deal with intelligence agents. They were slick, inscrutable and most of the time, liars.

„Dr. Altman, this is Agent Lynn from Homeland Security."

They shook hands. "What can I do for you, Agent?"

"We are looking for a man, mid-40s, five eight tall, he got into a shooting and might have been brought here. We're searching all the hospitals in the area."

Teddy nodded, trying to hide her distrust. "Sirs, we're giving all information about suspicious persons and shot wounds to the police, I don't think that there's any case which isn't reported." She instinctively thought of her John Doe in the ICU. He had asked her when he could leave – it perfectly fit the picture. He was on the run.

"Do you have picture for me? A name?", she asked the agents, even though she already knew that this was about him. It could only be about _him._

"His name is Jack Bauer.", one of the agents said and slid a picture over the counter.

Teddy took it.  
A blonde man, blue eyes wearing a black suit and black tie looked at her on that picture. At first glance, he had nothing in common with her John Doe. When that guy had come here, she had pictured him being a homeless, a slob, maybe even a junkie living on the streets. In no way that fit this picture of a man like this.

She bent down and typed the name into the computer, sure already that she wouldn't find a patient under this name.

"Sorry, we don't have anyone registered under this name", she told the agents and took the picture into her hands again. She desperately wanted to keep it. "I can show this around, the personnel from the emergency room… maybe one of them has treated him." She needed to make this as inconspicuous as possible. "Is there a certain timeframe in which he could have come here?"

"Yesterday or the day before.", the agent answered, sliding a card with a phone number over to her. "Call us anytime."

 _I will,_ Teddy absent mindedly answered, and they already left as she still stood there, drowned in these blue eyes that stared at her on that picture.  
She didn't know it yet that she had just saved his life. Again.

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 _enjoy, and please R &R!_


	4. Chapter 4

_They are closing in on Jack..._

 _... enjoy, and please R &R! amacma_

* * *

Jack lay in bed, restless. He had been awake for hours, after Dr. Altman had left the room. Actually, he didn't even know how late it was. The room where he was only had one window, and that window was on the side to the hallway and not to the outside.

He wished that he could close the shutters somehow. He felt watched, lying here, all those people on the outside were rushing by and didn't care to look into here anyway, but yet he felt watched.

After she had left, he wasn't able to go back to sleep any more.  
She wasn't Audrey. Damnit.  
The past hours, before talking to her, his mind had been consumed with thoughts of her. That she had come here to see him… that she had found him, which would mean that either DoD or CTU had also found him, before the Chinese would.

But in the end, this was all an illusion.  
That was not Audrey. Nobody had found him yet. No DoD, no CTU. No backup. He was still on his own, lying here, condemned to this bed, like a sitting duck. He was sure that the Chinese were looking for him. He had had no illusions that they wouldn't follow him, as he had decided to take his chances and run.  
If he had been a little quicker, just half a minute, everything would be different. They wouldn't have had a chance to fire at him.

He remembered running across the rear deck when they finally found him. They shot at him, right away, even though they knew he was unarmed. Somehow, he managed to stumble the few yards over to the railing and let his body fall over it. He hadn't been thinking of the consequences then. No single second. That there could be something below… another ship or the pier… that he maybe wasn't even able to swim anymore…  
Somehow, he had managed to survive, although he wasn't sure how. There had been a few guys on the pier, and they came to drag him out of the water right away. The next thing he remembered was already waking up here, believing that Audrey was here.

Damnit. That doctor really reminded him of her.

For a moment, his fear of being caught by the Chinese again was gone, as Audrey occupied his mind again. Where was she? Was she still in Washington? Or L.A.? Working with DoD or CTU? Was she still trying to find him or had she given him up already?  
He couldn't stand to think of her. In the past months, thinking of her was the only thing that had kept him alive. But now, it was painful, to realize that she was still out there somewhere, and he probably wouldn't get the chance to see her again.  
It had been such a childish dream… to dream of coming back, to her, to start all over.  
It wasn't gonna happen. They were still after him, even if DoD or CTU would find him before them, he'd still be a fugitive on the run.  
There was no place for Audrey in his life.

He closed his eyes and leant back, trying to push the thoughts about Audrey out of his mind, to replace them with the thoughts about the Chinese. How close had they come already? Did they already know he was here?  
He tried to move his legs. It worked, even though his left leg was in some kind of a splint. The catalogue of his injuries, which Dr. Altman had read to him before sounded long, but in the end, there was nothing very severe on it, except for the shot wounds. Everything else was just superficial.  
He could try to leave, maybe tonight or tomorrow night.

As suddenly the door opened.

He tensed up, grabbed the handle above his head, trying to sit up. Had they found him now? He was at their mercy… just like all the time before. They would take him and bring him back, either kill him for his attempt to run or they'd continue to… There was no mercy where they'd go.

Teddy entered the room and closed the door behind her. She saw how he instantly relaxed, collapsing back into the mattress. It was no wonder, she thought, _he really must be on the run._  
Today he at least looked a bit better and stronger than yesterday.

"How are you feelin?", she asked him, as she went over to the monitors.

"Great.", he just murmured and looked away, still out of breath. She seemed to care about him, but looking at her just reminded him of Audrey again. One more bad thing.

Teddy sighed and grabbed the chair. In a safe distance, she sat down. The distrust that had made her do this the night before had gotten confirmed by appearance of these two agents.  
"Who are you on the run from?", she asked him.

Slowly, Jack turned around to her. "What makes you think I'm on the run?" _Wow, must have been the largest amount of words I've spoken in months,_ he thought.

"In the night you asked me when you could leave."

"I guess all your patients ask you that."

"Yes, but not two days after being shot at. Not when they're still in ICU. Not before asking about their chances on recovery." She took a deep breath, "Not before telling me what their name was."

"My name's Frank.", he said.

 _Bullshit,_ Teddy thought. But she decided to play along. "And your last name? Social security number?"

"Got no insurance." He couldn't help but sneer. "Throw me out."

That even drew a smile from her face. "No way."

As he saw that, he unwillingly had to smile, too. _Wow, my first smile in months,_ he thought. She really reminded him of Audrey. She was smart, too, and though, just like her.

"You're lying to me.", she silently said, and came a little bit closer. "But I can't help you if you're lying to me."

"You can't help me one way or the other.", he silently answered. She already knew that he was on the run, it was obvious. There was no sense in denying that. "I'm a sitting duck here. I need to leave."

"Who are you on the run from?"

What should he answer? The truth? That he was haunted by Chinese agents? That he had raided their embassy, that he was officially dead, had been in hiding, resurfaced and they had caught him right away? That he'd fled from them and that they could be here in this building already?

"Help me get out of here", he implored her to help him.

Teddy shook her head. "Not before you tell me who you are on the run from."

"I can't tell you that."

"Who shot at you?", she asked, looking deeply into his eyes.

He stayed silent.

Teddy saw how much he wanted to get out of here. "I know you weren't fighting the police.", she added. "You don't seem to be a fugitive."

"I'm not." He slightly shook his head. "How do you know?"

"They were here two days ago and had a look at you, they weren't really interested."

His eyes widened in horror. "The police know that I'm here?" He buried his face in his hands for a moment. Now he was completely fucked.

Teddy heard him murmur a silent _damn it._ She had even more bad news. "Agents of homeland security were here.", she added.

He froze. "When?"

"Few minutes ago."

"What did you tell them?" He turned around to her, trying to sip up.

"Stay down!", she commanded, really loud – he even complied. She slid her chair closer. Somehow, this man didn't look like a fugitive. He was not on the run from the police. There was something else going on around here. "They came in looking for a man with shot wounds, I told them that we reported all cases to the police, but obviously they didn't know anything about the police report." Finally she pulled the picture out of her pocket, showing it to him. "They were looking for this man."

Jack stared at the picture in her hands.

"You look nothing like this right now… but this is you, right? Jack?"

That was him. The picture from his file… the one they'd made on his first work day at DoD. He hadn't seen himself in a mirror for months, but he guessed that he didn't really look like that man anymore.  
"Why did you…" He couldn't even put in words. Why hadn't she brought the agents here? Why hadn't she told them about him?

"You are on the run.", Teddy silently began, "You have wounds all over your body showing that you've been tortured by somebody. You are not an aggressor. You are a victim that we have to protect. Who are you on the run from?" She didn't want to sell him out to the wrong ones. "Do you think these agents can help you?"

He shook his head _no_. "You said they didn't know about the police reports?"

"No, they didn't." She saw the panic in his eyes. "But they should have known, right?"

He imperceptibly nodded. God, she was smart. She had probably felt it right away that there was something horribly wrong about this. "Help me get out of here-", he read her name tag, "Dr. Altman, I beg you."

She came closer. "Jack…", she began, "Who are you on the run from?"

He feared that she wouldn't believe him. "I can't tell you. You wouldn't believe me."

She straightened up, disappointed. "Then I can't help you, Mr. Bauer." This was taking her nowhere.  
For a moment she considered calling these agents. Why not let them do their job? Was it really her business to hide this man from them, only because she had a bad feeling that she couldn't even prove?

Eventually, she stood up and put the chair back to the wall. "I better go." She left the picture that the agents had given her at the side of the bed.

"Dr. Altman", Jack called, as she was already leaving.

Once more, she turned around. "Yes?"

"How did these agents look like?"

Teddy shrugged. "Like all agents.", she spoke, "Black suit, sunglasses, black hair, slick, charmless, dishonest." She could have gone on forever with that list of adjectives.

"Did they look Asian?", Jack asked.

"Yes. Definitely Asian descent." How did he guess that? "Do you know them?"

He shook his head _no_ and leant back, staring at the ceiling.

As Teddy left the room, she felt uneasy.

.

.

.

 _please R &R!_


	5. Chapter 5

_this is a shorter chapter... longer ones are to follow! I promise_

* * *

After one and a half days off, Teddy came back to work on Wednesday evening for another night shift. As soon as she entered the building, she felt the urge to look how Jack was doing. She had withstood the temptation to call the station and ask for over 36 hours – but only because she knew that rumors would get going… another one without health insurance, wow, was she developing a pattern…  
She'd had enough of those rumors the last time. So therefore, she swore to keep this private, that she was interested how this man was. She had her reasons why she was interested - and they were nowhere romantic but professional. She had never seen a patient with such severe injuries who only wanted to get out of hospital again. The thought of these two agents who had been here, asking for him still made her shudder. And last but not least, she guessed that she still was the only one to know his real name.

Silently she changed her clothes and made her way to the ward. Owen was already there.  
She stepped in front of the whiteboard to see what her day would bring, acting like she wouldn't care. If she kept it up for ten more minutes, she thought, she might be able to look 'normal' when she'd routinely check on him.

Owen came over. "Did you hear it already?", he asked.

"Hi.", she started, secretly fearing the worst – had he died? Developed a sepsis, inner bleedings,…? "Heard what?" She glanced at the other whiteboard where the names of the patients were. Room 512, where he'd been was no occupied by somebody else.

"Our John Doe disappeared.", Owen said, angrily.

Teddy wanted to ask 'how' – but she realized how inappropriate that would be. What would Owen think if she asked him 'was he taken away or kidnapped?'.  
"When?", she just asked.

"Yesterday night.", Owen growled. He was angry at that man, after they'd had him in the operating room for eight hours and another three days in ICU. "I mean… it's really not a problem if somebody has no health insurance, but couldn't he at least have given us his name so that we get part of the costs reimbursed by the state funds?"

 _Damnit, I know his name,_ Teddy thought. She wouldn't tell him, no. She followed Owen over to the counter. "How is this possible, he got two fresh gunshot wounds, how could he walk out of here?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"Any trace?"

He shook his head. "No. Let's just forget it, maybe he's living on the streets somewhere around here… then he'll be back in a few days anyway, most likely in a black bag." He handed her another patient's file. "Could you have a look at that for me?"

 _Sure,_ she absent-mindedly answered and took the file, leafing through the pages to make Owen think she was working.  
But instead, her mind was racing. Should she have helped him? He had begged her for help to get out of here and it had been such a nonsense idea for her that she hadn't thought for one second to actually help him. She should have known better, that if she didn't help him, he would eventually get out of here on his own.

Teddy sighed and went over to her post box. Just the usual stuff, a few results from blood tests and laboratory findings. In between them was a sheet of paper, it belonged to a patient's file.  
She took it to put it back into the file where it was obviously missing, when she read the person's name. That was a sheet of paper out of _his_ file. One from the end, with almost no important information on it. It was a consent form, to be signed by relatives. No wonder why nobody had filled it out.

She stepped aside and hid it in the other patient's file, as she turned it around.

 _I took the rest._

 _I O U_

 _J_

It didn't look like he'd been in any hurry to write this. That he had left her a note at all somehow even comforted her. He hadn't been taken by anyone.  
But still, he was in severe danger to be out there somewhere in his state.

Teddy folded the sheet and put it into her pocket. She hoped that these hadn't been his last words.


	6. Chapter 6

_Dear readers - what do you want? Jack and Teddy getting closer or just staying friends? I don't know yet._

* * *

Another four days later, on Sunday evening, her mind was still somehow occupied by him. Where was he? How was he? Or worse: was he still alive, after all? So much could have happened in between.  
He hadn't come back here, not alive and not in a black bag, like Owen had predicted. By now, she had checked twice with the people from the morgue. But if he had died, he could as well have been brought to any other hospital in the area and then she'd never even know it if he had survived or not.

The evening was unpleasantly cold. She pulled her jacket closer around her body as she searched for the car keys in her pocket while she balanced her bag with one hand and her used clothes in her other. It had rained not long ago and the ground and the roof of the car were wet.

"Dr. Altman."

The voice made her jump. She knew this craggy voice. It sounded even harsher than she remembered it. Slowly, she turned around.  
She made herself expect almost everything. That he was not alone… that he would point a gun at her…

The truth was far worse. He looked like hell. He stood there, leaning against another car, bending over, clutching his stomach with one arm. It must hurt like hell. He wore a woolen hat over the bandage round his head. He still wore the cast around his nose but it looked a bit rumpled. At least his chin and cheekbone weren't as swollen any more as they had been a few days ago. He looked even a bit more like the man on the photo that she'd seen.

But the color of his skin. Pale white. He looked like a walking ghost.

"Four days, Jack.", she remarked. "I already thought you didn't make it."

"Sorry.", he breathed. "That I'm still alive."

"It didn't mean it this way. You look like hell." She derogatorily shook her head. "How did you find me?" He looked like he had caught some of the recent rain. If he didn't watch out, he could easily get pulmonary inflammation. Life threatening, in his state.

"It took me two days to find you.", he silently said. "The day before yesterday you were way too fast for me when you left the building… yesterday I could make out the numbers on your license plate." He pointed at her car. So that was how he had found her here. He'd been probably been waiting here for hours.

"What do you want from me?", she asked. Hell, wasn't that obvious? He was on the run and he was close to dying if she didn't help him.

He looked up, into her eyes. He was not good at asking for help, he had never been good at that. All his life long he had always pulled himself together and swallowed down the pain until it would go away one day. But that didn't work now. With every minute that had gone by after he had left the hospital ward it had become worse. Without any medication against the pain he couldn't even stand upright any more.  
"Help me…", he breathed.

"Do you want me to bring you back in?", Teddy asked, though she already knew his answer. He didn't want to be found.

He shook his head. The bad feeling overcame him that she probably didn't even want to help him. "Or just give me something against the pain. I swear I'll never bother you again."

"You won't bother me again.", she remarked and put her bag and the used clothes onto the roof of her still locked car. She hated to put these things on the wet roof. What was she doing here?  
Damning herself already, she turned back again an went the few steps over to him. Wordlessly she pulled up one of his eyelids and then felt his pulse. "Because you'll be dead by then.", she added.

"I can't go back in there.", he spoke under his breath. "I'd rather die out here."

Her hand still lay at his throat. They looked into each other's eyes.  
Teddy wondered how calm he spoke about his own death. "Why?"

"I can't let them find me again."

"Who are _they_?" She knew that he still didn't want to answer. But now she'd leave him no choice. "You owe me some answers, mister. Otherwise I'm not going to help you."

He stood with his back to the wall. "Chinese government.", he silently said.

"What?" Not believing it, she stared at him. This was by far not what she had expected. It sounded so strange that even had to be true. "Why?"

"I…" How should he tell her his life's story in just one sentence? "… worked for our DoD and other agencies… they're trying to take revenge."

Teddy stood there, spellbound. Was this believable? Was he credible at all? Somebody was on to him, that was clear. His body spoke for itself. "Did they do this all to you?", she asked.

He slightly nodded, not wanting to think back.  
They both stood in silence for a while.

"I know it's hard to believe me…", he added.

Actually, it was not that hard. Everything in the picture fit. "Who were these agents that I met?", she asked.

"Most likely Chinese Agents. They were too close." He groaned, "I had to leave."

"They said they were from homeland security", Teddy commented. She hadn't believed a word they'd said.

Jack shook his head. "Homeland security doesn't even know I'm here. There's no reason for them to suspect I'd be here. They would have known about the police report and they wouldn't have come to _you_ , trust me."

He spoke out loud what she'd been thinking all the way long.

"I know I'm asking much.", he began, pleading her to help him, "If I survive this I swear I'm gonna pay you back… and if I have no chance then tell me now."

"This isn't about money." She took the car keys out. He was a pitiful creature, one that she couldn't leave out here. "Get in."

He was so glad to hear these words.

Teddy watched him push himself away from the other car and limping over to hers. Hesitatingly she went over to him and helped him walking. She knew what injuries were beneath that wet jacket that he was wearing. There was hardly a spot where she could touch him without hurting him even more.

As they finally sat in the car he leant back and closed his eyes. "Take me to some cheap motel and give me something against the pain. I'll be okay.", he tiredly said.

 _No way,_ Teddy thought. He needed more than that. "Let this be my concern. I know what I'm doing."  
In the corner of her view she saw Christina coming out of the building. Hurriedly she started the engine and drove off, hoping that nobody had seen her in the past minutes.

.

.

* * *

.

.

He didn't know any more how he had managed to get up here. She hadn't gone to a motel – she had taken him with her, home to her apartment which was on the third floor of an old brick building, a ten minute drive away from the hospital. Somehow she had dragged him up the stairs, not like a doctor but like a drill sergeant, yelling at him to take another step and one more.

He was lying on a sofa, in a warm living room. The first soft bed in days. Aside of the three days in hospital, the first soft bed in months.

Half dazed by the exhaustion and the pain from his abdomen he watched her bend over him. She used scissors to cut the tee shirt open that he was wearing.  
Goddamnit, she really looked like Audrey.  
Why couldn't she look like somebody else? Why did she – the only person of all he'd met in this hospital who he trusted at least a little bit – have to remind him of such painful things, every time he looked at her?

"Here, take these.", she commanded, handing him a glass of water and two pills.

She cut the bandages around his torso open and cleaned the surgery wounds. The painkillers took a while to kick in. He was so exhausted that he would have let her do anything with his body, no matter how much it hurt.

After a few minutes, she told him to sit up because she wanted to have a look at the wounds on his back, too.

It all felt surreal to him. One by one she took off the dressings and replaced them with clean ones. He felt her hands on his skin. The first time ever, that somebody was treating him with care. And yet it hurt to be taken care of.  
He hated it to feel somebody being behind him. Too many bad memories. It was not easy to stay focused not to freak out. _You're not over there,_ he told himself again and again, _you're home._

For Teddy, it was the first time to take a closer look. It had been years – since med school? – since she'd done something as simple as examining such superficial wounds. When he'd been on her operating table she hadn't cared that much about these wounds. It had been a war against the clock to get the bullets out and stop the bleeding.

"How did you get those?", she asked and ran her finger along one of the bloody weals.

He didn't answer.  
She heard him mumbling something, not to her but to himself. He was all tensed up. Every time she touched his back, he cringed a little. The closer she got to him, the better she could hear what he was telling himself: _you're not over there, you're home._

She helped him lie back down decided not to ask any questions for now. It was obvious, that he had gone through hell and she had somehow tapped into a discomforting zone with that question.

He silently watched her pull a tree in a pot over to the couch. A few moments later he saw that she was preparing an infusion bottle for him. He held out his hand to make it easier for to put the needle into the back of his hand. For a moment their eyes met.  
"You're dehydrated", she remarked.  
"And you're good at improvising", he mentioned, nodding at the IV bottle that hung on the palm tree.

"Yap", she just said and thought back to her time in Iraq. That was the place where she had learned to improvise like this. In med school she had learned to do things _right._ But down there she had come to terms with the plain and ugly reality. There had been so many times when she had to improvise, in all kinds of ways. When things had been missing, when equipment hadn't been sufficient… or sometimes when time and personnel hadn't been there to do things properly, after a helicopter loaded with ten wounded men came and nobody except for two doctors was there to treat them.  
"You better sleep now.", she silently said and stood up. So many times five or six of ten hadn't made it. Most of the times, when they had shot wounds like this guy.

Jack noticed how silent she suddenly was. He already wanted to ask her if he'd said anything wrong, but he let it be.

Teddy switched off the lights but let a little lamp on her library shelf on. "If you need anything, I'll be right over here.", she said and added, "Me and my gun, if you're thinking about trying to rape me." She hoped he'd understand her sarcasm.

He did. "My doctor didn't allow me to do that." A little smile appeared at his face. He wished her a good night and watched her disappear into the room. For quite a while he stared at the closed door and almost couldn't believe it how lucky he was to be here.

.

Teddy lay in bed but she couldn't sleep. Goddamnit, there was a wounded soldier just outside the room- why had she taken him home with her? What if he died? That would cause a lot of problems... She quickly put them aside. His state was bad, but not that bad. He wasn't close to death.  
Was he dangerous? When she had joked about her gun, she had actually wished that she'd really have one here.

She lay in bed, eyes open. Was this part of a guilt trip, trying to make up for all those men that she hadn't been able to save? In the moment when she'd first seen this ranger tattoo she'd unwillingly been reminded of the old times in Iraq.

 _I did nothing wrong. I couldn't have done more,_ she told herself and turned to lie on the other side.

No, it was Henry, who he reminded her of.

That sudden realization struck her a blow. A guy with no-one left but her. One she knew nothing about but decided to help.

She fought the tears but she lost that war quite soon.  
She wished this man out there wouldn't be a stranger named Jack Bauer but her husband. That was the moment when she started to hate herself for having let this guy come here and get so close.

.

.

.

 _Jack missing Audrey,  
Teddy missing Henry... _


	7. Chapter 7

_Dear 'guest' - thanks for your reviews! I totally agree... although Teddy meeting Audrey would be a bit... strange, wouldn't it?_

 _enjoy, amacma_

* * *

For the first time in months, he didn't feel haunted. Even Teddy realized that, because she saw how peacefully he had slept through the night. She helped him get up to go to the bathroom in the morning, but thereafter he already went back to sleep again. It looked like his body really embraced the rest.  
Even the color of his skin had changed – from being ghostly pale, back to almost normal.

Before she went shopping for groceries, she had a last look at the sleeping man on her sofa. _I will throw him out as soon as he's able to survive it._ She was determined now.  
Teddy wondered if he realized how much distance she was trying to keep. _Do not build up any emotional bond_ , she kept telling herself. Last night she had clearly realized that she was having a pattern. Guys who seemed to need her… what a pathetic one. As if she didn't allow herself to do any better.

When she came back, she found him sitting there, drinking a glass of water. _God, I really have him on my hands,_ she thought, _I have to give him something to eat._ It was an awkward situation in which she tried to give him the cold shoulder. It didn't take him very long to notice it.  
As he stood up, a few minutes later, he shooed away as she wanted to help him. He wanted to do to this alone. It had probably been a bad idea to let her bring him here… After all, he could see that she disliked him being here.

As he went a few steps, she simply couldn't just stand there and look, seeing how much trouble he had walking. "Let me help you.", she said, trying to support him.

"You don't have to.", he murmured, but he didn't push her away either. "I see that I'm invading your life too much already… I better leave."

"You can't leave.", she sighed, "You won't survive out there." No matter if she wanted to have him here or not, she was determined not to let him die.  
Right as they reached the bathroom door, the doorbell rang.  
Shocked they looked into each other's eyes, a thousand similar thoughts running through their heads: Police? Agents? The Chinese?

Hurriedly, Teddy pushed him inside the room and closed the door. She ran over to the sofa, threw all the medical supplies that were standing on the table onto the blanket that he'd used, rolled it up into a ball and rushed to bring the 'evidence' of his presence away. As the bell rang a second time she shouted _I'm coming_ and threw the stuff into her bedroom.

All tensed up, she went over to the door.  
As she looked through the spy hole, she let out a breath of relieve. It was only Mark.

"Teddy?", he called.

"I'm here.", she said to him through the closed door and opened the lock and removed the chain. Slowly, to get a few moments to catch her breath again before talking to him.  
"Hi."

"Hi.", he replied, smiling her, and slowly brought his right arm to the front, showing her a bottle of red wine. "Won't you let me in?"

"Mark….", she sighed, "… we were there, it didn't work out. And it's way too early."

"I'm not here for that.", he answered, even though he was very well aware that it was a lie. "We both have the evening off and I saw how stressed out you were, the last days… if you want some company…?"

She could hardly say no… and she could hardly tell him that there was already someone here, that it was their John Doe from the hospital and that she was helping a stranger hide from whoever was after him and that she was breaking the Hippocratic oath because he actually belonged in ICU and not on her sofa…  
Mark went past her, over to the couch and put the bottle of wine down on the couch table.

She followed him, glancing at the bathroom door, praying _please don't come out._

Somehow she had to get Mark out of here, before he'd open up that bottle of wine.  
"Why don't we go out?", she asked him. She didn't really want to but it was the only way out that she saw.

He was surprised to hear that. During the past weeks, after Henry's death, she had made such a sad impression that he would have loved to ask her out much earlier, just to cheer her up. Common decency had told him to wait and to go slow. It was a welcome surprise that she suddenly wasn't going slow.

Teddy let him help her into her coat. As he went out of her apartment in front of her, she was saved. For now.

.

.

* * *

.

.

Teddy came home alone. Hours later. She had a look at her wristwatch. Past midnight. She'd been away for 9 hours!  
She put the key into the lock and cautiously turned it, not to make a sound, not to make Jack wake up, if he was already asleep.

She stepped into her apartment and found it dark. No single light was on.  
Slowly, she went over to the living room and found the couch empty. Had he stayed in the bathroom? She opened that door, finding it empty, too. Now she was getting worried. She rushed into her sleeping room. As she turned on the light, she found it empty as well. To her surprise, the blanket that she had thrown in here, to hide the medical supplies was folded together neatly and lay at her bed. On one of the drawers stood a box, she guessed that the things she'd hid in the blanket were in there now.  
But no trace of him. He had wiped out all traces of his stay here and had disappeared.

She went back to the couch and let herself fall down.  
Not even a note.  
Even though she had told herself not to get emotionally involved, she was disappointed now. The whole evening, though she had spent it with Mark, she hadn't been able to get that guy out of her head.

The doorbell rang again. Probably it was Mark… trying to finish, what he had started in the car.  
Sadly smiling, she stood up and went to open up. "Ma.." she halted in the middle of the sentence.

It was not Mark.

"He left ten minutes ago.", Jack said, as if he felt responsible to explain where the one whose name she was calling was. He was a goddamn intelligence agent - of course he'd have a look if that guy was still around.

"What are you doing here?", she stammered, caught by surprise. "I already thought you had left."

Jack slowly shook his head and nodded at the staircase just outside her apartment door that lead to the attic. "No."

A small smile lit up her face. "You waited out here because you thought I'd bring him home?"

He shrugged. "Yeah. How should I know?"

She let the door swing open. "Come in.", she softly said. Right now she was actually glad that it wasn't Mark. If it had been Mark… would she have let him in? Most likely, yes… then they'd be already on the way to the bedroom by now.  
To be here with Jack was a real relief, compared to Mark.

She helped him walk over to the sofa. "I didn't want to ruin your evening", he said, "I would have stayed away if you…"

"You didn't ruin it.", she interrupted him. Actually, he had saved her from making a big mistake which she'd regret in the morning.  
She helped him sit down. The bottle of red wine which Mark had brought earlier still stood there.

Jack watched her, as she went over to the kitchen and got two glasses and a jug of water. She put them on the table between them and sat down on the leather chair to his left. He didn't say a word, while she opened up the bottle and poured herself a glass of wine. She took the jar with the water and filled water into the other glass that she then put in front of him.  
He skeptically eyed her. "Water?"

"You're on painkillers, mister.", she smiled, "And I'm still your doctor."

"Right, ma'am." They clinked glasses. He had to admit that he was really quite thirsty after waiting out there for such a long time. If she had brought that guy home with her, he would have spent the night here in the warm staircase and would have disappeared in the morning hours.  
"So, how was your date?", he asked.

The simple question felt like he had stabbed a dagger into her hear. "Don't ever ask me that question again, Jack.", she spoke. He couldn't know how much he reminded her of Henry by asking something that trivial. "You need to know… I lost someone, not long ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that." She looked so sad that he would have loved to go over there and just hug her. But he decided not do. He had invaded too much of her privacy already. "I know how that feels.", he silently added.

Teddy watched him sip at his glass of water. He balanced the glass in his bandaged hands. "Will it ever get better?"

Jack stared at his own reflection in the water. He looked horrible. After a while, he slightly shook his head. "No.", he spoke under his breath, "But you'll forget that it happened. And the intervals when you remember it get longer and longer."

Whoever he had lost, he was clearly not over it. "Audrey?", she silently asked, hoping that she wasn't asking too much.

He shook his head again, saying "No, I was married." He looked up from his glass of water, over to her, "she died six years ago. Her name was Teri."

They both sat in silence for a while, sipped at their drinks and thought of the ones who they had lost.  
As Teddy put the empty glass down to the table, Jack reached out for the bottle and gave her a refill. "You don't need to work tomorrow morning, right?", he asked. Otherwise he would have had a bad conscience, giving her even more alcohol than she'd already had. He didn't know how many glasses she'd already had, but this one clearly hadn't been her first one today evening.  
"This won't make it go away but it'll make you forget it for just one evening.", he murmured as he put the bottle down again, in reach for them both.  
She shook her head and watched him. It hurt him, for sure, to lean over the table. But either he'd had a few painkillers too much or he just didn't let it show. "What happened to you?", she silently asked.

Their eyes met. He wasn't ready to talk about this, she saw.  
"You saw that all...", he sighed, referring to the wounds all over his body, and took a deep breath. "Doesn't that speak for itself?"

"It does.", she whispered. They went back to their silence, back to their drinks.

"Whatever we say…", Teddy began, "we seem to step one another landmine."

He smiled upon her choice of words. "You could be right with that." As he put his empty glass down he had an eye on the bottle of wine. "Maybe we shouldn't say anything at all, then."

Teddy had already seen him squint at the bottle. No matter how painful it was to step on all these landmines, she loved his company. He was different than Mark. His was a calm person, but his simple presence was enough to make her feel not alone.  
She leant over, took the bottle and poured a little bit of wine into his empty glass.

Wordlessly he smiled at her and then took it. In silence, they clinked glasses.

Jack didn't even remember any more when he'd had his last drink. Must be more than one and a half years ago. He was sure that that little bit of wine wouldn't take long to kick in.

Teddy watched him drink. He was musing about something. She really wanted to know what he was thinking about, but she guessed that it would only be another landmine. "Tell me something.", she said.

"What do you wanna know?"

She shrugged. "Something which isn't another landmine." She wanted the silence broken.

He finished his wine, put the glass back onto the table and slowly leant back, slow enough to make his abdomen hurt. "Let me think.", he said, staring at the ceiling. It wasn't that easy to find something that it was worth talking, something that wouldn't be another sore spot. Going through the possible list of topics he quickly came to the conclusion that his whole life only consisted of landmines.  
Kim? She hated him and he didn't even know where or how she was. Family? No good memories… why else would he have joined forces. Army times? Not worth talking about. CIA? Couldn't talk about. CTU? Neither. The past one and a half years? He threw the thought away as quickly as it had appeared.  
There was nothing that wasn't horrible.

He slightly turned his head and looked at her. She sat there, her legs drawn to her body, her glass of wine in her hand and looked at him, expectantly.  
"You remind me of someone.", he said. It was the only thought that came across his mind.

"Really?", she laughed, "Of who?"

"Audrey."

"Why?"

"You look a lot like her. Really." She was out there somewhere. First he had thought that speaking of her would be like stepping onto another landmine, but actually it wasn't. To think of her made that warm feeling return to his chest, that he'd already started to miss.

"Is that why you grabbed my arm when you woke up?", Teddy asked.

"What? Did I?"

"Yes.", she laughed. "I was already getting of afraid of you.", she lied.

"Sorry…", he apologized, smiling back at her. "I don't remember that. I remember seeing you in my room, and I thought she was there."

Teddy saw that his thoughts got lost in 'what-ifs'. "Why don't you contact her?"

"It's complicated."

"Why?"

He took a deep breath. "You know that I'm on the run.", he began. "She wouldn't accept that." Before Teddy wouldn't understand in a wrong way, he added, "She'd put herself in danger trying to be with me and I can't let that happen."  
Now he felt the alcohol kick in. It made it possible to think about Audrey without wanting to start crying. Remembering her virtues, her determinedness, her will to be with him, that she'd move heaven and hell to get what she wanted.

"You love her a lot, don't you?", Teddy whispered.

He slightly nodded his head _yes_. With a smile on his face. Not a sad one.

Then they sat in silence again, drowned in their own thoughts. After a while, Jack poured himself another glass of water. He didn't want to get drunk. If Teddy got herself drunk, that was okay with him. But he knew what was on the stake for him. He didn't know when he'd be back on the run. It was safer to be cautious. He had to use every second to get well again. It could decide over life or death.  
She laughed, as she sat him with the water bottle. "Good as gold.", she joked.

"My doctor ordered it this way.", he said, adding, "You're drunk, Teddy."

She knew that herself. Mark had bought drinks, the whole evening long. Stiff drinks. A wonder that he had dared driving her home. The two glasses of wine were only a drop in the bucket. Yet, she poured herself a third glass, Jack watching.

"Your turn, now.", he said.

"With what? Pouring drinks?"

"No, with telling me something.", he leant back and closed his eyes. "We're still circumnavigating landmines."

She took her time answering.  
Finally, she found something.  
"My date was horrible.", she began. "He told me he only wanted to comfort me but after the third drink he couldn't really conceal it any more what he really wanted." In the end, now, she could even laugh about it. Maybe just because she was drunk?  
"God, in the end I even kissed him! Stupid!", she laughed out loud and dissolved into giggles.

Jack was glad that it wasn't him who was drunk. "Just tell me his name, I'll kill him for you.", he joked.

That made her giggles even worse. "Stop it, Jack… you're killin _me_!" She bent over, laughing.  
Now even she realized, that she was really drunk. Mark would have already taken advantage of that. But that guy over there didn't. Because he was in love with the woman named Audrey? Because of his state of health? Or because this wasn't his character?  
Even though she didn't know him at all, she felt safe here.

She looked into his eyes, deeply. "Thank you, Jack."

"For what? _You_ saved _my_ life."

"For just being here." _Goddamnit, had she really said that?_ The alcohol made her say the silliest things. She was talking before thinking again.

"You're drunk, Teddy.", he repeated, softly smiling. "And I guess your gun would be safer out here with me than in there with you.", he nodded at her bedroom door.

She started to giggle again. "I don't own a gun.", she laughed. Yesterday night she'd just said that to scare him away from her bedroom door.  
"Have another glass of water with me, Jack..." she sighed, "I haven't felt this good in weeks."

Obediently following her orders, he refilled his glass with water and poured a little bit of wine into hers. No matter if she was drunk… no matter that he wasn't… she was right with what she'd said. He also hadn't felt this good in weeks. Even in months.  
He leant back and enjoyed the simple normality of her talking about everything and anything. Except landmines.

.

.

 _please R &R_


	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter eight_

 _enjoy, amacma_

* * *

Short before noon, the following day, Teddy woke up – well, the light that shone in from the little gap between the curtains made her stir, but the headache didn't allow her to go back to sleep.

She sat up in bed and looked around. God, she didn't even remember how or when she'd gone to bed. After all, she lay here, still fully dressed beneath the blanket.  
She sat up.  
That was waaaaay too quick.

She didn't remember how much she'd had last night. Quite a lot of drinks with Mark and then there was this bottle of wine.  
She opened the door and found the empty bottle standing on the couch table. God, that must be the reason for her headache. Jack hadn't really helped with that one...

He just came out of the bathroom, putting his shirt back on. She was surprised to see that he had removed the bandages around his head and the one on his nose. For the first time at all, he almost looked like the man on the photograph that the agents had showed her.  
But her view got caught in the shirt he was wearing. One of Henry's… damn, she shouldn't have given him _this_ one. Every other time that she saw him wearing Henry's clothes, it nearly broke her heart. He was a bit smaller than Henry, the sweatpants were at least an inch too long. And he was a lot skinnier than Henry, probably just undernourished, another evidence of what he'd gone through.

"'re you alright?", he asked her.

Teddy held her forehead, as she slightly nodded yes. What a silly situation, to be asked how she was, from someone who was in his state.

"I made some coffee", he silently added, hoping to cheer her up.

She smiled. She could already smell it.  
Sill holding her head, she went over to the kitchen counter and poured herself a cup of coffee. It didn't make the headache better.  
The glasses and the jug were standing on the counter, right next to her.

Her eyes searched for Jack, finding him standing out in the living room, watching her, too.  
"How are you today?", she finally asked, and referenced to the cup of coffee in his hands, "you shouldn't drink coffee."

He looked at the almost empty mug, finishing it in one draught. "You should have told me that three hours ago.", he added, softly smiling. "You look like you should go to bed again, right away.", he joked.

Teddy shook her head, "no, I really can't." She ran her hand through her messed up hair, trying to think back. "When did we go to bed yesterday?", she asked. She couldn't remember.

"You mean today? You fell asleep around five." That was when she had suddenly gone silent, still sitting in the leather chair, having hugged her legs.

She didn't dare ask him if it had been him who had brought over to her bed. But judging from how silent he was, that probably was how it had happened and now he didn't want to cause her an awkward moment.

"Your guy left a message.", Jack added and nodded at the answering machine. The call was what had woken him up a few hours ago.

"God…", she held her aching head once more and went over to play the message. Mark was asking her out on a date again, for tonight. It seemed that she'd gotten his hopes up the day before.  
She took the phone with her and went into her bedroom to call him.

"I'll leave, whenever you want me to.", Jack said as she came back out a few minutes later. She looked a bit relieved, when she put the phone back down again. "No, you don't have to leave", she said, "I told him once and for all that we won't repeat yesterday evening." The past evening had been a good one – but the part after coming home, not the part being with Mark. "I never really wanted to go out with him in the first place _._ ", she added.

Jack had to smile as he heard that. "You told me that… yesterday night."

"Really?"

He nodded. "About five times, to make me feel sorry that you sacrificed yourself to hide me." She had really been drunk.

Embarrassedly she tried to change the topic as quick as possible. "I should have a look at your abdomen. And your back…", and your arms and your ribs and your head, she could have added, but she didn't enumerate all his injuries, "in a few minutes", she added and let herself fall down on the leather chair, in which she had spent half of the night talking.

Jack took a glass of water and put it down on the table in front of her, before he lay down at the sofa again.

As she saw it, she gladly took it. "Are you taking care of _me_ now, mister?", she asked him.

He slightly shook his head. It was just a glass of water, the only thing to help against the headache.

"But it was you who brought me to bed, right?"

"You needed a little help walking.", he murmured. She had gladly taken his help, put an arm around his neck, murmuring a few unintelligible things. When he put her down on her own bed she had grabbed him by his shirt, telling him to stay there, calling him _Henry_. She didn't even want to let go any more, not even as he tried to pull the fabric out of her hand – it had only made her tell him to stay, murmuring that she loved him.  
He let her have the illusion, confusing him with some other guy who her heart still belonged to. It were only few minutes anyway, after which she finally let go, when she fell asleep.

Even though she couldn't remember all that, Teddy felt embarrassed. Hadn't she been the one to help him walk, just another day ago? She didn't even remember. Stealthily she glanced at him lying there. He looked better than on the day before. Day by day, he got more of his strength back. She could swear that he had even put a little bit of weight back on.  
She forced herself to drink that glass of water. Otherwise the headache would never go away.  
For a long while she sat there in silence. Jack had his eyes closed, trying to sleep. The laceration on his temple didn't look that bad any more. His right cheekbone was still swollen and black, but the scratches on his chin had also healed off within the last days.

Half an eternity later, she slowly stood up and went over to him, sitting down on the couch table. Jack stirred as she took his right hand into hers and brushed the sleeve of the shirt back, to get to the bandage around his right hand and forearm. But he saw that her view lingered on the sleeve of the shirt he was wearing, and not at his arm. Maybe she remembered now how she had fallen asleep. Or maybe not.  
"You miss him a lot, don't you?", he said, silently, not to rip her out of her daydreams.

Teddy just nodded and turned back to his arm, loosening the bandage. "I don't wanna talk about it.", she breathed and kept working. As she was finished taking off the gauze, the disfigured skin came to light. The skin on the back of his right hand, on his wrist and on the inner side of his forearm was hurt- red, burned, barely healing. At first, she had thought these were second degree burns, but then again, these wounds looked different than the ones she had seen before.  
"What caused that?", she asked, grabbing a fresh piece of gauze.

"Now that's something I don't wanna talk about."

Their eyes met.

"I just asked because…" she tried to explain,

"I know.", Jack cut her off.

Teddy watched him, as he slowly lifted his right hand, to have a look at it. It was the first time for him to see it, after getting away from the Chinese. Slowly, he turned it, and looked at it from all sides. Throughout the past days, it had always been bandaged. Now, for the first time, he could see it clearly. The disfigured skin. The burns. Even if it would heal someday, it would always look that way.  
"It doesn't even hurt now", he commented, surprised, after seeing how big the damage was.

"Cortisone ointment.", Teddy answered, "And it's only superficial."

He still looked at it. He hated to think back. Would this ever end? Would he ever be able to look at himself, in the mirror, or just at his hand without being reminded of what had happened?  
He hated to remember. And yet it was inevitable.

"Acid.", he said.

Teddy froze. It was a fitting answer. Chemical burns often left similar traces to normal burns.

"The first time it happened… I guess it was a month or two ago, before I was brought to the ship." He kept sight of his hand, "They poured some transparent liquid over the back of my hand… it ran down here", he pointed at the spot, where the red marks enclosed his whole wrist, "and got spilled all over the table", he showed her the inner side of his forearm, that had lain in the pool of caustic liquid.  
"It hurt like hell. After a few minutes, they let go of me, poured water over it to wash the rests of the liquid away and put me back into my cell. It was just a little bit red then. But I knew this wasn't yet over." He had another look at the skin just beneath the knuckles. "They repeated that, the day thereafter. And then once more. After the third or fourth time they didn't even care to wash the rests of that acid off."

A cold shiver ran down her spine. She could hear it in his voice, in every single word, how hard it was for him to talk about this.

"A few hours later, one of them came into my cell and took some water to wash off the rests. They repeated that routine… and every other day, this looked worse." He remembered how the itching red skin had started to blister, then to weep and after some days to bleed, breaking up after the smallest contact with anything. "The time until that one came to wash it off, it got longer and longer. And one day, he came and I already thought that it would now be over, but he didn't have water. He poured even more of that stuff over me." He wondered how easy it suddenly was, to talk about it. The first sentences had been like repeating this torture, but now it was almost healing to let it out. "They stood just outside the door and took delight in hearing me scream. I don't know how, but I managed to rip the soaked clothes off me and crawl away from that caustic puddle."

Spellbound, Teddy sat there, listening. She didn't move an inch. She couldn't have. It was unimaginable what he'd been through, and yet she felt with him, with every word he said, like if they were here, doing this to her, as well.  
She was staring at it, as he laid his arm down on her thigh again, to let her dress it. She was used to seeing such things. Wounds of all kinds, shot wounds, blood all over, broken bones, skin ripped apart. She was there to mend things, to heal, and she hardly ever took her time to think about how painful it must have been to get hurt like that.

"Teddy?"

She startled, awaking form her apathy again.

"I didn't mean to frighten you.", he silently said.

"You didn't", she hurriedly said.  
She grabbed the new pieces of gauze that she'd already prepared and fixed them with the bandage.  
"You can't even imagine what things I've seen before.", she remarked. All kinds of severed limbs, victims of explosions and landmines, shot wounds… But yet it felt a little different, hearing him talk about the torture that he had endured. He was not just another nameless soldier. At least not to her.  
"Finished." She put on a little smile and looked up again, "I asked and I got an answer. I'm used to seeing ugly things."

"I'm sure." He had seen her wearing an army combat uniform on one of the pictures that hung on the walls around here. But he decided not to ask her about it.  
"I hadn't thought it would be that easy to talk about it.", he added, having a look at the new bandage around his right arm. All the evidence was hidden beneath it again. "Thanks."

"I'm your doctor, Jack, and we're strangers. That makes talking easier, I guess."

He slightly nodded. "I guess you're right."

She stood up and went to prepare some breakfast, while he still lay there, thinking. To him, she was way more than a stranger. She had become a friend – his only one.

.

.


	9. Chapter 9

_Here we go... another chapter, J &T still have a long way to go... thanks for reviewing, amamca_

* * *

It had been a rainy day full of normalcy – something that he wasn't used to any more. He was used to having nothing to do, being somewhere in hiding, or sitting in that rotten cell, but he was not used to being free any more. Any other second, he expected someone to come through the front door, pointing a gun at him… or that one of the windows would shatter and that they'd storm the apartment.  
At the same time, he also knew that this wouldn't happen. He had left no traces. Nobody but the Chinese knew that he was here in Seattle – after all, they had brought him here. The police had taken a photo of his face, but Teddy ensured him that they hadn't taken his fingerprints. They way he'd looked like, a week ago, he was sure that they couldn't ever use that photo to identify him. He was safe here. He just had to tell himself that again and again, maybe he'd believe it then…. Most likely at the time when he had to leave. He couldn't stay here forever, invading her home and her life like that. He didn't know for sure how much of her life she had already changed, just to hide him here. She couldn't meet any friends, she could basically talk to nobody, invite nobody.

He lay in silence, on the sofa, only the little light on the book shelf was still on.  
He couldn't sleep. He had been lying here for days, and he just wasn't tired. What should have made him tired? Lying here? Watching TV? Watching Teddy cure her hangover, first by drinking lots of coffee and then trying to do yoga, watching her do the laundry, reading a few journals and having dinner with him… Every other thing she did – in front of his eyes – reminded him more of Audrey.

She had gone to bed half an hour ago, but he still stared at the door behind which she'd disappeared.  
Where was Audrey right now? Part of him desperately wanted to know, but his head told him to forget that right away. She was safer if he didn't even know where she was. And she was safer if she didn't know where he was. He knew her. If she knew that he was here, she would take the next flight to Seattle and knock at this door.  
For a while, his thoughts got lost in the dream of seeing her.

Until Teddy opened up her bedroom door.  
Silently, not to wake him up, she sneaked to the bathroom and back, after a while – when she finally saw, that he had his eyes open.  
"Did I wake you up?", she silently asked.

He slightly shook his head. "No. Couldn't sleep." After a while, he added, "and you?"

"Neither.", she murmured and went back into her bedroom, grabbed that pile of Henry's clothes that she had already prepared for him and took them with her.  
"Here are some fresh clothes for tomorrow." She put them down on the couch table, explaining "I guess I'll already be gone when you get up in the morning. My shift starts at six."

He murmured a silent _thank you_ and kept watching her, how she aimlessly looked around in the room, grabbed a few small things and put them back at their places.  
"Teddy?"

She turned around.

"Are you okay?" What a stupid question. He could see her blood shot eyes. Probably she had cried when she'd gone to bed.

"I'm okay.", she hurriedly answered. Too quick.

After all that she had done for him, he couldn't stand to see her like this.  
"Teddy, come here.", he ordered, and patted at the couch table in front of him, telling her to sit down.  
Slowly she came over and sat down in front of him, resting her hands in her lap, looking away. She didn't want to let him see her cried-out eyes, although it was so dark in here that she guessed that he wouldn't notice them anyway.

But he did.  
Hesitatingly, Jack stretched out his left arm and put his hand and hers, hoping that she'd be okay with it.  
"I don't wanna see you like this.", he silently said.

"It was you who told me that it wouldn't ever get better, remember?" She sniffed and turned her head, to look into his eyes. "You were right."

"I shouldn't have said that." He didn't know what to say, to cheer her up. Maybe there was nothing, that could ever cheer her up. He tried to think back, what had helped him when he had been in her place. "I made such an awful lot of mistakes in my life, Teddy…", he began, "I don't want you to make the same."

Damnit, she had just gotten a grip of herself again, she didn't want to start all over, though it was inevitable. She had to go back to bed, and it would be all the same like it had been half an hour ago. "I don't feel like talking now, Jack.", she said and already wanted to stand up.

He firmly held her hands, holding her back down. "Then just listen."

She looked into his eyes, wondering how strong his left arm still was, even though it was broken and in a splint.

"I abandoned my family, Teddy. I spent most years of my marriage away from home, at places, where most people wouldn't voluntarily go. When I came home I had so many awful pictures still in my head that I didn't want to live the normal life anymore and they never understood why I couldn't talk to them. I brought hell home with me… and I even went back for more and more." He inhaled sharply. "Teri got killed by people who were after me. I could have prevented it. If had made different decisions." He was sure that he could have prevented it, if he had only tried harder. He got lost in what-ifs.

She saw the tears in his eyes. "So what is the mistake that you don't want me to make?", she asked.

He collected the runway thoughts again, looking into her eyes. "I talked to nobody, Teddy. To no one. Not even to my daughter. I quit my job, I secluded myself form anyone thinking it would get better if I just waited long enough, but it didn't. When I found out that this wasn't the solution, I went back to what I had done before and I went on even more dangerous missions, thinking that I had nothing left to lose. I plunged into work, into meaningless relationships and I thought it would be better if I let no one get close again. I tried to drown it alcohol, it didn't work. I ended up on the needle, it didn't make it better, except for those ten minutes. I guess I went on that self-destructive path, because I thought it would make me forget. Make things better. Or keep myself busy while it would go away."

She hadn't expected that much sincerity. He poured out his heart to her, to show her that she wasn't alone. Embarrassedly she lowered her view, staring at his hand at hers. She couldn't picture him drunk or on drugs.  
"Are you still on that path?", she asked him, silently.

He slightly shook his head no.

"What made you stop?"

"I hit rock bottom. I lost my job, checked into rehab. I had to face myself there.", he started, "If I hadn't had the drug problem I would have just gone undercover again, for another mission, or would have signed up for another tour of duty." He pressed her hand faster, forcing her to look at him, "You have to promise me on thing, Teddy.", he said.

"What?"

"That you don't go back." He was dead serious.

"Back where?"

"War."

She froze. How would he know? She had never even told him that she'd been in the military. How could he only know about that?

"I saw the pictures over there.", Jack explained, nodding at the wall behind her, "Of you and the other doctor who operated on me." He didn't remember Owen's name. "You were in the army, just a few years ago. Baghdad, right? That's where you learned to improvise like you do."

"I never thought of going back.", she answered brusquely, just to stop the conversation. How did he get that deep into her life, into her thoughts and her past? "Who told you I was there at all?" She thought of the hidden forms, in her bedroom drawer, already filled out to sign up again. Had he snooped through her things?

"Nobody had to. There's a date on that picture. How many wars had we, back there?" He also recognized the building behind her, on the picture, but he decided not to tell her. He had been there, too. "I saw you work out today. Pushups, sit-ups, all that…" He looked deeply into her eyes. "You did exactly the things required for the army re-acceptance test."

He had her. Sometimes she forgot how easy to see through she was. How little detail was needed to get the greatest part of the picture.

"Promise me you won't go back."

"What if I want to?"

"You don't want to!", he hissed, "You just think this is a way to make the pain stop. To forget it all. You have the illusion that things will be better when you return after 6 months or a year." He wanted her to understand him. "It will not be better, when you come back. You run away from the misery, you go through hell and bring hell back home in your head. Then you run again. It gets worse and worse. Don't make this mistake."

They stared into each other's eyes. For an unpleasant eternity.  
Jack felt her trembling slightly. She obviously didn't know what to answer.  
"You don't have to say anything, Teddy.", he silently added. He hadn't wanted to make her feel even worse. "I just wanted to tell you that."

She had to get a grip of herself again.  
Teddy pulled her hands away from his and buried her face in them. God, he was right with every word that he'd said.  
"What do you care?", she whispered.

"I just don't want you to make the mistakes I did.", he tonelessly said, watching her in the dark. He knew exactly what was going on inside her – he had been there.

After a few minutes of silence, she got a hold of herself again. She eyed the man lying in front of her. He was a wreck all over. How could someone like him dare to tell her how to live her life, when he was not even able to stay alive without her help? "You said you broke the habit", she started, "but in the end you didn't, right?"

He softly smiled at her. "You don't take advice from a beaten up man with lash marks on his back and two bullets in the stomach?"

For the first time, her tension eased. "Exactly.", she murmured.

"Believe me, I did get out. At least, I broke the habit.", he calmly said. "After rehab, I was done with all the field work. I took a desk job in Washington."

She laughed as she heard that. "What? Black tie and everything?"

"Yeah." He was happy that she somehow cheered up again, even if she was only laughing at him.

She couldn't picture him in a suit, behind a desk, doing something boring. Not after what he'd told her in the last couple of days. "Now how did that go?"

"It was great.", he began, shifting a little bit on the couch to face her. He liked to think back to his time in D.C. "It was the only time in my life that I ran away from nobody. I went home in the evening and the first thing was not to check on my gun, when I left the building. The moment I didn't feel the wish to go back into hell was when it started to get better." He took a deep breath and reached out to grab her hand again. "I swear, that day will come for you as well."  
He saw how torn she was. Had she signed up for another tour of duty already or had he still been in time, talking her out of doing it?  
"I met Audrey there", he continued, "For the first time in years, I started a relationship the right way. I told her everything I had ever done, I put all the cards on the table. You must do that as well, Teddy, when the time comes.", he told her, "Even if it's hard to talk about it, do it."

She sighed, upon hearing his advice. "In the arms of a man, telling him about how much I loved Henry?", she derogatorily smiled. "What a perfect start."

"You'll see.", Jack silently answered. He had given her enough advice for one day. She'd find it out on her own one day that this was the only right way to start all over again. He remembered his first nights with Audrey. It hadn't taken them long to start dating, after they met in the office for the first time. One night, just after he had brought her home, he was walking to his car when he felt like turning around and going back. He knocked on her door again and she was quite surprised that he was back already. Hesitatingly, she let him in.  
He remembered sitting down on her living room sofa. He felt the need to tell her everything, before she'd fall for him. She deserved to know who she was getting involved with. She sat there, next to him, quietly listening to his life's story, when he told her about Teri, about his marriage, about cheating on her… there had been quite some occasions. He told her about his time in the army, CIA, CTU. The hardest thing was to tell her about the drugs.  
It must have been hours in which he had talked. She sat there all the time, next to him, listening closely. After he was finished she did the same, telling him about her marriage that wasn't yet over, about all the good times and the bad ones.  
He had never felt closer to anyone than to her in this moment.

"Henry and I used to talk a lot…", Teddy mused, ripping Jack out of his daydreams. "Above all, about my dates."

"You dates?"

"Yes", she laughed. She knew that she had to explain a lot to make him understand. "As we got married, we didn't do it for love. He was dead sick and had no health insurance." She shook her head, laughing about her own silly decision. She looked at Jack's hand in hers. "Seems like I'm into broke guys."

He was glad that she was smiling again. She started picking at the splint around his left wrist, to give her restless hands something to work on. "I didn't want a relationship with him, I just didn't want him to die in front of my eyes when I had the chance to save him."

Jack silently watched her. She was a kind soul. "But eventually, you fell in love with him."

She nodded, smiling. "It took a while. In the beginning, I was still seeing other men, acting like I wasn't married at all. Then there was a phase when I met Henry after each other date, checking on him, because he had diabetes.", Teddy sighed, "He always asked me how my date was."

"Your own husband.", he remarked. "And I thought my life was strange." Jack saw that she loved to remember this. There was a certain glance in her eyes, and the sadness was gone, for at least a moment.

After a while, her eyes found his again. "That's why I freaked out yesterday night, when you asked me how my date had been."

"Sorry" Jack silently apologized, still spellbound by her eyes.

"Jack…", Teddy began, she didn't know how to finish that sentence. Her heart belonged to Henry. His to Audrey. But still, right now it was just the two of them and she loved his presence. "It is good not to be here all alone."

He didn't feel much different.  
He sat up.

Teddy watched him, as he stood up and took the blanket away. Confused, she looked up to him as he stood right next to her, telling her to lie down on the couch.  
She did as she was told, lay down and let him put the blanket over her.

"What are you doing…?", she silently asked, cuddling into the blanket. It was strange. It smelled like Henry. Well, he was wearing Henry's clothes, using the bottle of Henry's shower gel that was still in her bathroom. She hadn't had the heart to throw it away.  
She watched Jack go over to her bedroom – he turned off the light which was still on in there and then he limped back and sat down on one of the leather chairs around the couch table. Only the little light above her book shelf was still on.  
"Where are you gonna sleep?", she tiredly asked him.

"I've lain there all day, Teddy", he sighed, resting his elbows at his knees. "I'm not tired." He looked at the clock next to the kitchen counter. "It's only five hours until you have to get up. You should sleep now."

She didn't have the heart to argue with him about this now. He knew that she didn't want to be alone, and so didn't he. Being alone was worst at night, in the darkness.  
She heard him wish her a good night and did the same. Stealthily she squinted at him, one eye closed, pretending to sleep.

Jack leant back and closed his eyes. But from time to time he looked over to her, as if he wanted to make sure that she was still okay ... and above all, still there.

.

.

 _please R &R, thank you_


	10. Chapter 10

_._

Teddy looked at the clock in the OR once more, as she finished the suture on her patient. For the first time in weeks, she wished for it to tick faster, so she could leave. In the past weeks, work had been the only distraction from sitting at home alone, thinking about Henry. Now, it had miraculously changed back.  
She was in time. Everything went as planned. And thank god, she wore a mask covering her face, so nobody saw her smile, when she thought of going home.

It was past eight already. She had done a fourteen hour shift, two coronary artery bypass graftings, but actually she had thought about Jack half of the day and the other half of the day she had tried to hide from Owen and the rest of the crew in what cheerful mood she was.

She remembered waking up, on the couch. He was still sitting in the leather chair next to her head, but he must have fallen asleep at some point in the night. When she got up and snuck into the bathroom and then into her bedroom, to get dressed, he didn't take notice. She already thought of letting him sleep, but then again, she just couldn't.  
She knelt down next to him and softly touched his shoulder. She couldn't tell what it was exactly, but something between them had changed after the past night, she felt. He woke up as she said his name, whispering _good morning._ She took the blanket that she'd slept with and covered him with it. It was a wordless understanding somehow. Nobody said anything but they still knew very well where they stood. _I'll be home around 9,_ she told him, instead of a goodbye.

Doing her best in hiding her cheerful mood from Owen, as she said goodbye for tonight, she made her way back home. She even stopped to get a bottle of red wine, since she wouldn't have to go back to work again until tomorrow night.  
It was on the way up to her apartment, walking up the three floors, when she realized that Jack could as well already be gone. _Unlikely_ , she thought and threw the thought away as quickly as it had come into her mind. But back stayed one more certainty: he would leave one day.

As she opened up her door, brushed off her shoes and put her stuff down, it didn't take long for him to appear. She found him leaning against the doorway to the living room. "'re you hungry?", he asked.

Of course she was, but it was a different thought which occupied her mind. "You look a lot better than a few days ago.", she said, totally disregarding his question.  
It shocked her, how much better he looked like – which would mean that the day when he'd leave would rapidly get closer.

"Thanks to you", he said, gesturing to come over, "I hope you like spaghetti."

She found the table already set and the food already waiting for her. "You cooked for me?", she stammered, surprised.

"If you call throwing a pack of noodles into a pot and waiting five minutes cooking, then yes" He was glad that she was home now. He had slept a few hours and then the awkward boredom of waiting to get better had set in again. There was not much he could do, except for making plans on how to disappear in a few days, or where he'd go to.  
Above all, he didn't want to leave.

They talked about some unimportant things while they ate, and thereafter, Teddy insisted on checking his surgery wounds once more.

Jack lay on the sofa again, watching her work on him. She was surprisingly silent today, seemed to focus more on what she was doing, and somehow, she was changed.  
He felt her hands… well, the sterile gloves that she wore, on his skin. She softly put new bandages around his belly, careful not to hurt his broken ribs.

"Teddy?"

She looked up from her medical masterpiece and took off the sterile gloves. "Yes?"

"Is something wrong?", he hesitatingly asked. He also felt, that something had changed, after the past night. "Did I… get too close for comfort? If yes- I didn't mean to."

She could have screamed out a loud no. Sitting on the floor, she leant against the couch, letting her view wander from the fresh bandages around his stomach, over his naked torso, up to his face. "No, you didn't.", she answered, suddenly wishing that he would have gotten much closer.  
Sadly she lowered her view. "You look a lot better, Jack. And I hate saying that.", she sighed, "because it just reminds me of the fact that no matter how good last night felt… it will be different again in a few days." The one thing had happened, which she hadn't wanted: she had become emotionally attached to this guy.

At a loss, he looked at her. Had he stayed for too long already, letting that happen? Damnit, he had really held back – he hadn't ever touched her, except for taking her hand into his once or twice. He had never even hugged her, had never let her get close in any other way. But right now, seeing her sit there, looking so lost, he really wanted to put his arms around her.  
He shifted a little on the couch, to make some space for her to lie down next to him. He wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but right now it was the only one he had.

Teddy realized it in an instant, what he meant with this. Hesitatingly and slowly, she first sat down on the couch, keeping eye contact.  
None of them said a word.  
He left it up to her if she'd lie down with him or not.

"Where will this take us, Jack?", she tonelessly said, looking into his eyes.

"Nowhere", he silently answered, "I promise."

She trusted him. Finally, she lay down, her back touching his front. He put his arm round her waist and then they just lay there.  
She had never felt his body touching hers before. Now she felt his chin touching the back of her head, she felt him breathe, since only the sheer fabric of her blouse parted his naked torso from her back. She felt his arms around her waist, and also their legs had somehow gotten entangled, lying on this small space together.

"I don't want you to leave", she murmured and leant back, pressing her back against him.

"You can't hide me here forever, Teddy.", he answered, hoping she'd see reality again. "I'm still on the run from the Chinese. The minute I leave here, I can't come back. It would be way too dangerous."

"Why don't you call our agencies to help you?" She didn't want to accept his plans.

"They wouldn't help me."

"Why?"

He answered nothing. It was all too complicated.

"Jack?" She turned her head a little, "Why won't they help you?"

"That's a long story.", he sighed. He knew already that she wouldn't let lose, until he told her. But he didn't know how or where to start. It went all the way back to the day when he had lost Audrey.  
"I got drawn back into my old job.", he murmured.

Teddy waited for him to continue. She slid a bit lower until she could rest her head on his upper arm. "How?"

"Audrey got kidnapped."

"Because of you?"  
She felt him shake his head _no._

"She also worked for the government back then.", he left out a few details on purpose. "I would have done anything to get her out."

Teddy realized how much harder it was for him to talk about this. "But you did get her out, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did" He closed his eyes and leant his forehead against the back of her head. It felt so good, to feel a human touch again after all these months. "When we got involved, she had still been married. Her husband returned that day, he got hurt during all that….", his voice was shaking as he continued talking, "… she decided to leave me and to be there for him."

All tensed up, Teddy lay there, listening. _I did what I always did,_ she heard him say.  
"You put your life on the line again."

"They were looking for somebody to do a covert mission on Chinese territory. One of the missions that they would always deny. Somehow they did find out my name and then they started haunting me. I staged my own death and disappeared. Our government would either deny that I'm still alive or that they still have anything to do with me. One and a half years later the Chinese got back onto my track and captured me when I came out of hiding for one day."

"When was that?"

"September 20th, 2011" The date had burned itself into his mind. The day when David Palmer died. The day then Tony and Michelle died. The day when he had seen Audrey for the last time.

"That was fourteen months ago…", Teddy whispered. She almost couldn't believe it. She had seen the wounds and the scars all over his body, in all possible stages of healing. Some of his injuries had already healed, long ago. She couldn't imagine how it was like, to be treated like this for fourteen months. It nearly made her cry.

For a few minutes she just lay there and held her own breath. He had turned silent, too.  
"What about Audrey?", she finally dared to ask.  
She felt him take a few deep breaths.

"Her husband died of his injuries. I didn't see her again until the day when the Chinese got me." He almost couldn't believe it himself that this had been 14 months ago. Maybe she had already forgotten him? No, definitely no. Not Audrey. Not _his_ Audrey.

"You didn't see her in almost three years", Teddy silently remarked.

"I know." Did it sound like pure madness, telling her that he was in love with a woman who he hadn't been with in three years? _I will never see her again,_ his head told him, but his heart told him that she was still out there, somewhere. It was telling him to find her, while his head kept telling him not to do it, just to keep her safe.

They lay there, silently, for quite a while.  
Jack felt Teddy's body, her every move. It felt good not to be alone. It felt good to talk to someone. It felt good to feel her lying in his arms, the touch of another human being, one that in no way wanted to harm him.  
But yet, it didn't feel _right._ She was not Audrey. Audrey was out there, somewhere.

Teddy didn't know what to do. She wanted to snuggle up to his body – but for what? He seemed to be a faithful guy. Damnit, was she really complaining about a guy being faithful now? Just because it wasn't _her_ , who he was faithful to?

Slowly freeing herself from his arms around her, she sat up.

Jack opened his eyes again, silently watching her. "Did I upset you? Disappoint you?", he asked.

Sadly smiling, she shook her head. No, she even liked him more, after all. "I'm gonna go to bed now.", she sighed, looking into his eyes. She didn't know how to put it into words what she actually wanted. She wanted him to come with her. To lie down with her and hold her like that again, even if it wouldn't lead to more - because she hated to go to bed alone.

"What if she didn't wait for you?", Teddy whispered.

He knew where was aiming at. "She waited, I am sure.", he softly answered. He couldn't picture Audrey with another man. Not this time. Not after the last time they'd parted.  
Even if she hadn't waited for him – he would wait for an indefinite time to get her back. Ever since he had met her, he hadn't wanted anybody else by his side any more.

Embarrassedly, Teddy looked away and then she stood up. Had she ever made advances to somebody like that – being turned down like that? Hell, no.  
She hurriedly wished him a good night and shut the door to her bedroom as quick as possible.  
 _Stupid, stupid, girl,_ she told herself, _you're forty, but you're acting like you were fourteen._ All night long, all day long, she had felt the butterflies in her stomach of which she once had been sure that they had died of old age, at least a decade ago.

She didn't even realize that tonight, no matter if she was alone or not, she didn't cry herself into sleep, thinking of Henry. Instead, she lay in bed, wide awake, staring at the numbers on her alarm clock. It wasn't even ten… waaaay too early to go to bed. The bottle of wine that she'd bought still stood on the kitchen counter, untouched.  
But going back out there was not an option either.  
She lay in the darkness and tried to listen what Jack was doing out there. She heard no sound. Was he asleep already? Through the keyhole, she saw that the light out there was still on. A few minutes later, it got darker. Probably he had switched off the lamps, except for the one on the bookshelf, which had always been on during the past nights.

Suddenly, the handle of her door moved and she heard his voice, asking her name. "Can I come in?" He stood out there, waiting for an answer.

She smiled sadly. To give her time to get dressed again? No worries, she never slept naked. "Come in.", she answered, pulling the blanket up to her chin.  
She only saw his silhouette in the darkness, limping over to her, holding something in his hands. Damnit, he had found the bottle!

He put the two glasses of red wine down on her bedside table and sat down on the bed, next to her. "You're a beautiful woman, Teddy.", he began, "You're smart, you are strong, you are generous and most likely the kindest person in one in a million." He didn't know how to turn her down without hurting her.

She stretched out her hand and laid it on top of his. "But your heart is taken by someone else…"

He silently nodded _yes_ , thinking of Audrey.  
No matter in whose bedroom he was, no matter with who.  
"Yes, it is.", he answered, before he leant back.

.

.

* * *

 _Where does being faithful start and where does it end?  
How faithful does he need to be in the end, to prove his love for Audrey?  
Tell me what you think... & please R&R! _

_yours, amacma_


	11. Chapter 11

She hated to think about the day when he'd leave. From the moment in which she'd taken him home, she had always known that he would leave again. In the beginning, she had even looked forward to that day.  
But not now.  
Falling asleep – not alone – was something she had sorely missed. And waking up in somebody's arms was even more beautiful.  
They had found their perfect position, the one to fall asleep next to each other. She'd lie at his side, resting her head on his right shoulder, feeling his hand at her back and his body beneath her right arm that she'd hold him with. She could lie like this indefinitely.

As she had awoken like this, three days ago, she hadn't even dared to move, not to wake him up, because she didn't want this to end.

Two days ago, she had spent half of her day off lying here, just like this. When she had come home after the next night shift, she had checked on his wounds again. He wasn't in a state where he would have been released from Seattle Grace, but in Iraq, she would have already sent him away.  
He stayed for another night. And then one more – the past night. She had been so happy when she had come home yesterday evening, finding him still there.  
But they both knew that the day was about to come, when he'd leave.

Teddy couldn't remember the last time when she'd let a guy into her bed without sleeping with him. Eyes open, she let her view wander over his body. The closer she eyed him, the more scars and traces of abuse she found. The two bullets had only been the tip of the iceberg.  
Lying there, she wondered how strange this was. Ten days ago, he'd lain on her OR table. She'd had her hands in there, getting these two bullets out, saving his life.  
She had brought the radiographs which they had made ten days ago home with her. In the hospital, nobody needed them, anyway. They didn't notice that they were missing. Looking at them, she had found numerous spots where his bones had been broken in one point in time, untreated. His nose had been broken two times already, but she couldn't say when that had happened. The ulna fracture looked like it had happened just ten days ago, it was a typical defensive wound. Probably he had tried to shield himself from being beaten with something. The fingers of his left hand had all been broken, but the fractures had healed, most likely a few months ago. Seven broken ribs, five of them, all on his back, which must have broken a few weeks ago, since they'd already started to heal. Those were even more typical defensive wounds, for someone who lay at the ground, being kicked.  
She had removed the splint from his left leg, yesterday. He had begged her to do it, and the X-ray showed that the bone had already started to grow back together ten days ago. It must have been an older injury. Probably he would have begged her to remove it anyway, no matter what the state of the injury was. He couldn't really be out there, on the run, with a splint around his leg that made him walk on a limp and quite immovable. When she had finished removing it, she had already feared that this would be the moment he'd leave. But he stayed.

He was getting better, day after day. It was the first time that she hated seeing one of her patients get better.

Hesitatingly, Teddy ran her hand across his body, letting it rest at his belly. He was wearing one of Henry's old grey T-shirts.  
He felt her move. Slowly, he stirred, and opened his eyes. He saw her grab the grey shirt, like it was the only thing of him that she could grab and hold that tight.  
He moved his head a little, and placed a kiss at her head. "I owe you my life, Teddy", he said, like he was looking for an intro to a very bad conversation. He felt strong enough to leave… well, he had felt strong enough for the past two days already, but he just hadn't wanted to leave. He would be going out into a lonely world again, with nowhere to go. He had to make another start from scratch- even though he actually didn't even want to. Maybe Teddy was the last person on earth who'd call him by his real name. There was nobody else left, he planned on not contacting anyone.  
During the past days, he had made his plans. Borrow a little money from Teddy. Go get something formal to wear, something that wouldn't attract attention like wearing Henry's clothes which were at least two sizes too big. Get sunglasses. Go find a branch of the UBS bank, get some money from the Swiss numbered account. Buy a gun, buy a car. Give Teddy her money back, somehow.  
And then, disappear forever.  
He planned to cross the border to Canada, find a cottage somewhere up north and stay there. Indefinitely, if necessary.

Teddy turned to look up to his face. She knew that _that_ was it. This was the moment when they'd have their last heart-to-heart talk. She felt like crying already. "I don't want you to go", she whispered.

He turned his head and looked into her eyes. _I don't want to go, either,_ he thought. But there was no choice. "I can't stay."

Tears welled in her eyes.

He brushed a strand of hair out of her face, carefully. "Each day I stay here the probability increases that somebody will find out about me, one of your neighbors, one of your friends", he started, musing "someone to catch you stealing supplies from the hospital to get me through… that'll get you in danger Teddy… They are still out there. They are still looking for me and they would use anyone dear to me to get to me."

Had he just said that she was dear to him?  
She answered nothing, closed her eyes and snuggled up to his body, probably for the last time at all.

The alarm clock rang, telling her that it was time to get up, get dressed and go to work. As she didn't react, Jack reached over and hit the snooze button. He slung both his arms around her and held her tight. "I don't wanna leave, either.", he whispered into her ear, "I owe you so much, Teddy… I was in hell and then I came here and I was suddenly in heaven."

She buried her face his neck, inhaling his scent for a last time.

The alarm clock mercilessly told her again to get up.  
She couldn't stall this any longer.  
Screwing up all her courage, she freed herself from his hug and got out of the bed. Standing there, she looked down at him, still lying there. "I can't see you leave, Jack.", she murmured, shaking her head slightly, "I'll just go to work and…" _when I come home you'll be gone,_ she meant to say, but she didn't get the words out. He understood her, even without words.  
Having a hard time not to start crying, she went over to the wardrobe and grabbed some clothes for herself. She opened the other wardrobe, saying "This was Henry's. Take whatever you need." She couldn't look at him. "I guess you'll need some money for a cab... I'll leave some at the living room table."

Then she just ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Jack lay in bed, motionlessly. So this was what saying goodbye felt like. It was so damn hard.  
He had never said goodbye to anyone, not in his whole life.  
Not even to Audrey, when he'd left her, pretending to be dead.  
She must have felt like Teddy was feeling now, even worse. He couldn't imagine what kind of pain he had made her go through. And yet he kept doing this to people again and again: he only brought them pain.

Quickly, he got up and over to the wardrobe. He soon found a pair of blue jeans, a fresh grey T-shirt which almost fit him, a warm pullover and a black jacket. Even a pair of shoes that fit. He heard that Teddy was still under the shower, when he stepped out of the bedroom. God, should he leave now? No. He hadn't even said goodbye yet. He was determined not to leave without saying a proper goodbye.  
At the table in the kitchen he found a small stack of twenty-dollar bills, next to two bottles of pills. An antibiotic and a bottle of painkillers. He pocketed all that and looked around. Well, there was nothing he could have left – he did not _have_ anything.

Fully dressed and ready to go, Teddy came out of the bathroom. She froze right away, as she saw him standing there. "Jack, I told you to…", she began. She had put up with leaving him behind… he was totally ruining her plans.

"Without even saying goodbye?", he slowly approached her. "I made that mistake, Teddy.", he thought of Audrey, again. "I won't make it again."

She grabbed her coat from the rack and her bag.

He knew that she was late for work already.  
"Let's go", he silently said and touched the small of her back, leading her outside.

She didn't dare look at him, but she didn't let him out of sight, either. He was walking almost normal, looking almost normal. In the past days, his beard had grown a little, covering the small injuries on his chin.  
Teddy locked the door to her apartment and they both started walking downstairs, next to each other. With each other step they made, the entrance door kept coming closer.

"Shall I take you somewhere?", she asked, as they had already reached the second floor.

"No, I'll be fine." He already had a plan. The bank as not far away. He could walk, or take a cab.

They finally reached the ground floor. The entrance door of the building was coming closer.

None of them knew what to say.

"Where are you gonna go now?", she asked him, sure that he wouldn't answer.

"Teddy"  
He grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop, just before they reached the door.

She turned around, looking into his eyes.

"Thank you.", he said, "For everything."

Hesitatingly, she brought her hand to his face and ran it over his cheek, let her thumb brush over his chin. "You said you owe me.", she whispered.

 _Yes,_ he breathed, watching her come closer.  
Goddamnit, she was just as determined as Audrey. He knew where she was going… and even though he felt bad about it, he let her have her own way.

She pressed her lips against his and backed him to the wall next to the door, kissing him with consuming passion, feeling, how his initial refusal slowly resolved. He started to kiss her back. For a moment he completely forgot everything else.

She let go of him, after a few minutes and stepped back, looking into his eyes.  
Did he look happy? No. Had she made him do something that he could only regret? No, she didn't feel sorry. She had wanted to do this for such a long time now…  
He put on a little smile, as if he was asking her _are you happy now?_

"Goodbye, Jack", she whispered, and placed another small kiss on his cheek, before she turned around and went out through the door, leaving him back here.

.

.


	12. Chapter 12

_Well, we had some typical GA chapters lately, but that one's gonna be typical 24..._

* * *

He was nervous, when he picked up the receiver of the payphone. It was a payphone at a gas station just a few miles out of Seattle.  
Everything had worked as planned up to now. He had found a branch of the bank, got some money from a bank official who was obviously used to strange clients withdrawing money from their numbered accounts. Ten years ago, he would have probably bound that man to his chair and started to question him who else his clients were – not knowing that he'd be one of them himself, one day.  
He had bought two guns from a pawn shop, a used car and some clothes and stuff that he needed for his getaway. A black bag with everything he needed lay on the back seats, as he was driving out of the city, going east, to find a quiet place to cross the border. He felt the holster on his belt and the second one around his right ankle. They gave him a feeling of safety which he had missed for quite a while.

But the longer he drove, the more he realized that if he ever wanted to call Chloe and ask her about Kim… and Audrey… he had to do it now, as long as he was still here. All the traces of his re-appearance had to stay in Seattle. Once he left, he needed to cut all the ropes.

Nervously he waited. Was the number still correct? It was one that she had installed for him – only for him – when she had helped him fake his death.  
That was three years ago. Nobody kept a secret line open for three years, or would she? The number was re-routed through numerous servers, to her phone.  
He was relieved when he finally heard it ring.

 _Pick up the phone,_ he prayed, leaning against the wall on the backside of the gas station, to have a look who was coming. He was here all alone. Except for his car, there was nobody around. Not many cars on the highway, either. A woman with two children was gassing up her car, he could see that in the reflection on the windshield.

"O Brian"

Finally hearing her voice made him jump.  
"Chloe" he stammered, and for a moment he didn't know what to say. _I'm okay? Stop searching? How is Kim? Audrey?_ He regretted already that he had called. He should have just disappeared, fuck his wish to know about them.

Chloe wasn't less surprised. She sat at her desk, in CTU, surrounded by people. "Hang on", she murmured, stood up and made her way to one of the server rooms, where she could speak freely. It also gave her a few moments to think about what to say to him. Her heart was pounding like mad.  
"Where are you", she finally said.

"Not important. I'm out."

"How did you get out?" She still couldn't believe to hear his voice.

"They said they were doing a prisoner exchange."

"When did that happen?" She wondered that CTU hadn't been informed at all. Above all, she wondered why she hadn't found it out earlier. She had several channels through which she was monitoring all governmental activities around Jack or any case in which his name would appear.

"It didn't happen at all, I fled.", he hissed, looking over his shoulder. He knew that nobody was here, but yet he felt watched, "I heard that they were about to exchange me to Xian Lei Zen."

"What?!", she almost shouted. That was a famous name which she knew very well. A high Chinese government agent who had miraculously become a human rights activist and had changed sides. It was one of their most valuable sources of information.

Jack got confirmed what he'd been thinking all the way long. "Our government would have never gone through with that, I'm sure.", he said, leaning against the wall again, "I guess this would have turned out into a two-sided long range execution."  
He had seen situations like these before. A government had no interest in getting their defectors back. They just wanted to see them dead.  
Actually, it all made sense. It had made sense to him in the second he'd heard the name of Xian Lei Zen for the first time, when one of Cheng's men mentioned it, as they were still on the ship.  
The US government was seeing him as a liability. They weren't sure if he had talked – and swear to god, he had not – but they wanted to make sure he wouldn't. "I'm nowhere near as valuable as Xian", he said, "I took my chances and fled, when I got the chance."

"Where are you?", Chloe asked again.  
In that moment, somebody came into the server room. She thought of hiding, but that wouldn't work out in that small space. It was Nadia, the new analyst.

"Unimportant." Jack screwed up all his courage to ask the question he'd been waiting for "How's Kim? And Audrey?"

She would have needed hours to tell him everything. Nadia came over to her.  
"Steve, can you send me two hard disks down which fit in the A7 RAID system?", she said, putting on her best fake smile for Nadia.

Jack realized that she couldn't talk. "Shall I call you back?", he asked.

"Yeah, call me back when you have them… an hour would be okay." She desperately needed to tell him a few things and she hoped he wouldn't go completely go dark before she'd get the chance to talk to him once more. "It's important", she added, insistently, before she hung up.

Jack put the receiver back on the phone. _Important_. That word resounded in his head.  
Actually, he was wondering if he should call her back at all. She had confirmed all his suspicions, that the exchange against Xian would have never happened. It had been the only way to save his own life to get off that ship when he had the chance to.

He went back into his car. _Important,_ she had said. What did she want to tell him? He had just wanted to hear that Kim and Audrey were okay, but he still didn't know.  
Motionlessly, he sat in the driver's seat. He had to leave from here. It was not safe to stay around the phone that he'd used to call her with. If anybody had tracked their call, they'd know now that he was in the Seattle region.  
For a moment he thought of not calling her back at all. Audrey and Kim were safer if he didn't know where they were. Because he didn't know if he could fight the urge to see them again forever.  
He grabbed the bottle with painkillers, which Teddy had given him, and took one.  
Seattle Grace Mercy West hospital, stood at the label.  
He could as well go back into the city. It would be easier to find a phone there and wipe out his traces.

Finally, he restarted the engine and joined the highway again, back into the city.

* * *

A small roll of money lay on the passenger seat, when he settled into his seat and took the throwaway payphone which he'd bought not long ago. He was at the parking lot in front of the railway station, actually one of the best places to make the phone call to Chloe. It was crowded, and in the middle of the city center. No matter if somebody traced him back here, they would never be able to draw any conclusions where he'd go next.

This time, Chloe answered much faster. And she already seemed to be in the server room. "Jack?", she said.

"I'm here. How are Kim and Audrey?" That was all he wanted to know.

"Kim is fine, Jack. She's doing her Bachelor in IT at Berkely", Chloe said, breaking the good news to him first. From time to time, Kim even called her, if she needed help with some special tasks.

Jack was surprised to hear that. But above all, relieved. "That's great", he tonelessly said. God, he was proud of his little girl. She had grown up into a great woman… she'd make her way, without him. "And Audrey?"

Chloe hesitated. "Jack, I don't know how to tell you this.", she said. She never thought that it would be her, who'd have to tell him. "She…"

Jack felt his pulse speeding up. "What, Chloe?!", he hissed, having a hard time to control his emotions. His heart was pounding like mad.

"She got in a car crash." Her voice almost let her down, as she continued, "In China. She went there, looking for you... She's… gone." She couldn't say the word _dead_. She just couldn't, though everyone else around here did. But what she'd found out in the past forty minutes made her doubts grow.

The phone slipped out of his hand. It landed somewhere, in his lap, Chloe's voice calling out for him, again and again, but he didn't listen.  
Immovably he sat there.  
It felt like somebody had ripped his guts right out of his chest, showing it to him, squeezing it and throwing it into the dirt. He was used to pain, but that one was harder to bear than any torture.  
Audrey.  
Gone.  
Looking for him.  
Dead.

Chloe hoped that nobody would come in. She knew that she had to give him time. There were other things that she needed him to know.  
"Jack", she said again, hoping that he'd hear it.

He sat there, unable to move and unable to cry though he felt like breaking into tears.

"Jack, there's more.", Chloe said, hoping he'd hear it.

He grabbed the phone, saying "What?", like he was spitting it into her face.

"I checked Xian Lei Zen."

He didn't want to hear it. "I don't care, Chloe."

"You better do, Jack!", she hissed back, "Listen: I found his release documents, for the exchange. You were right. He should have been exchanged four days ago in L.A. It was a DoD mission."

 _Why DoD?,_ she heard him say, in between two silent sobs. "Why didn't the CIA or CTU handle that?"

"I don't know yet, Jack, the mission paper doesn't say your name. It just says that he should have been exchanged for _two_ US citizens."

Jack froze. One more? He had never taken into consideration that there could be another prisoner in Cheng's hands. It totally changed the balance between his and whoever's life against the one of Xian Lei Zen. "Who is it, Chloe?"

"I don't know.", she silently said, hoping he'd be able to put the pieces together. "We never got her body, Jack. They said she burned to death in the car."

Audrey.  
The other one could be Audrey. Her life was important enough to be weighed against Xian Lei Zen. Especially if her father lobbied for it.

"Jack?", Chloe said. "Jack?"

"So she could have been freed four days ago.", he tonelessly said. The thought of her, dying, was unbearable. But the thought of her, being in Cheng's hands was even worse. And the thought that him running away from Cheng might have cost the only chance on getting her back was killing him.  
They didn't even know yet if it was her or not. But he could put the pieces together. Her body had never been found… she was probably in Cheng's custody. DoD was organizing a rescue mission and only Heller knew who the subject was.  
"I need to talk to Heller", Jack said, feeling his stomach cringe. It was time to go to his account.

.

.

 _Jack will meet Audrey again... i swear_


	13. Chapter 13

.

When Teddy got ready to leave the Seattle Grace hospital, it was way past midnight. Her shift should have ended around eight, but she was called to help out with an urgent case. Car crash, 6 persons with severe injuries.  
When she heard that, she had even been glad, that she wouldn't have to go back home that soon. She would go back to an empty place again, but right now she didn't even know if she was so sad because of missing Henry, or sad because of missing Jack.

She felt like she had cheated on Henry with Jack. Damnit, it was a bad feeling. Henry hadn't even been dead for a month and she had thrown herself into the arms of a stranger, right away.

But the time did come, when her day was finally over. The last one of the crash victims was stable, all the documents and the files were in pristine order,… she just didn't find any other things to do to delay her departure any longer.  
And she had to leave before the others around here would get suspicious.

She looked at her watch. 1:30 a.m.  
The hospital was almost quiet at that time. There weren't many people left, except for her.  
She hated the thought of going home.  
She hated the thought of unlocking the door, finding her apartment empty, except for a few used clothes and memories.

Sad, she went down the corridor, to the changing room. She didn't even realize it at first, that somebody followed her. Every other four yards, she saw her own shadow on the floor, when she passed another one of the ceiling lights. She was so tired that she didn't notice that there was a second shadow, one that was following her.

As somebody grabbed her from behind, she wanted to scream out loud, but that man was already covering her mouth. She felt something cold being pressed against her neck… a gun?!  
Although she was struggling, he tore her into a room on their left, kicking the door closed behind them. She kept kicking and beating into his direction, trying to struggle free.

"Teddy."

The voice made her freeze.

As he felt how her struggling ceased, he added, "I would never harm you. Do you trust me?"

She hurriedly nodded her head, since he was still covering her mouth to stop her from screaming.  
Finally, he let her go.

She turned around, to look at him, still trembling. She had thought she'd never see him again. But here he was, under what circumstances was not sure. "What the hell was that, Jack?", she hissed, watching him stand in front of her, in the dark. He was just about to put the gun back into the holster at his belt.  
It had only been 16 hours, but she barely recognized him.

"I would never point a loaded gun at you", he stammered, now racking the slide once to get a bullet into the gun barrel. "But there are video cameras outside and if anyone ever…"  
He was exhausted. It had been a long day for someone in his shape. "I just want to protect you from _me._ "

He reached into his pocket and pulled a roll of money out, holding it out for her to take it. "I swore I'd pay you back.", he said.

Teddy didn't want to take the money. "That's too much. You will need it yourself.", she brusquely answered, still not sure if she should be glad to see him or afraid.

He lowered his hand "I won't be needing it where I'm going.", he breathlessly said. He wasn't feeling well. He was sweating. The surgery wounds on his belly hurt from being up on his feet all day.

She stepped closer, grabbing his shoulders. "Where are you going?", she demanded to know. He looked horrible.

He couldn't look into her eyes. He was at an end. After talking to Heller, he had been driving around aimlessly for hours. "I'm going back."

"Jack?", she rattled his shoulders slightly, forcing him to have a look at her, "Going back where?" She guessed that there weren't so many good places at all that he could go back to.

When he had been driving up and down Route 101, crossing the city center, he'd seen the SGMW hospital, passing by. He had stopped on the parking lot behind the main building, finding only few cars left. It was past midnight already, when he stopped there, knowing from his own experience that there was not much going on there.  
He had a whole night to think about his life. And there was not much that he could do to change the future any more.  
He stopped the car close to the place where he'd met Teddy, a week ago, when she'd taken him home with her.  
Her car was here.  
He had tried to get rid of the thought of talking to her. There were so many more important things on his mind now. But in the end, he was condemned to just sit there and wait, for the next eight hours. An hour later, he took his few things, and went inside.

 _Going back where?,_ he heard her ask him.  
It wasn't easy to answer that. He didn't know it himself where exactly they would bring him.

He lowered his view, at a loss, what to say. "China.", he said. It was the first time that he said it out loud, to himself, where he'd be going. "I'm going back.", he added, as if to confirm it to himself that the decision was done.

"You can't be serious, Jack, they'll be …"

"I know what they'll be doing", he interrupted her. He knew that very well. They were going to beat him up. They were going to lash him. They were going to get that bottle of acid again. They were going to electrocute him and waterboard him.  
He was tired, but he couldn't sleep. This was his last night in peace, without pain and he should use it to get some strength back, he knew, but there was no chance on getting a minute of sleep. His thoughts were circling around Audrey, around Cheng, Heller, the exchange that he had fucked up. Eventually his thoughts also reminded him of how dark his future would look like.  
Slowly he sank down, to sit on the floor, waiting for Teddy to do the same.

A little bit afraid of him, she sat down, too, three feet away from him, facing him.

"I need someone to talk to, Teddy, or I'll be going crazy.", he breathed, burying his face in his hands.

"I was held somewhere in a prison, over in China. About three weeks ago, I was brought onboard a ship.", he began, "It was a Chinese freighter, an agent named Cheng Zhi who had questioned me the months before also came along. I overheard them talk about an exchange, and a name of the one who they wanted to exchange me with. Xian Lei Zen. I knew that our government would never exchange me for that person, I was nowhere near that valuable. I thought all the US government wanted to do was to get me in their field of view, to kill me with a sniper bullet and prevent that I'd ever break under Cheng's torture one day. I heard when the ship reached the port of Seattle and then I took the slightest chance to run. I killed one of the guards and managed to get to the deck to jump overboard when they shot at me."

Silently she sat there, she didn't dare to move an inch. He had changed a lot, in the past hours. This was no longer the man she knew. He was depressed, she could see that he had cried. A lot. This didn't fit the one she knew. "You ran for your life, Jack.", she hesitatingly spoke.

He nodded his head and sadly smiled. "Like a coward", he added.

"There's nothing wrong in saving your own life!", Teddy hissed.

He turned his head, looking into her eyes. "Audrey went to China, searching for me, a few months ago. She got captured." His voice trembled, saying this. "She's Secretary of Defense Heller's daughter and a high level DoD employee. She should have also been exchanged. _She_ was worth giving up a man like Xian. I didn't know that she was there. I didn't know she was in Cheng's custody. I didn't know she was on the ship, too. I didn't know that she would have been the primary subject of the exchange. As I fled the ship, I fucked up everything. The exchange should have happened four days ago. But the Chinese didn't show up, because they thought they couldn't keep their end of the deal, after I was gone." His stomach churned, saying these words. "She's there because of me. She's there because she went there for me and because I fucked everything up."

She sat there and didn't dare to move. She didn't dare get closer to him and neither did she have the heart to touch him. The body part closest to her was his right leg. Sitting there like they were, she could see the holster at his ankle with another gun.  
"What are you gonna do now?", she tonelessly said.

"I've talked to Heller and a few old friends. We could locate the ship. Ever since I jumped off it travelled to San Diego and back. It's going to arrive back at the port of Seattle in a few hours and they've set up another plan for an exchange."

Teddy watched him fumble around at his hands nervously. "Xian against Audrey?"

Jack shook his head, in silence. "The government won't give away Xian just to get Audrey."

Teddy didn't dare to speak it out loud. They were exchanging him for her. She wanted to rattle him by his shoulders, screaming _run for your life,_ but she knew that he'd never do that. He did what was expected of him. He did what he himself expected him to do.

"Why can't they just storm the ship and get her out?"

"It would be a political offense. No government agency will engage in this. And if I try to do this I might get her killed." He had thought it all through. He was armed to his teeth. With the things that were in the trunk of his car, he could have started a small war.

Jack laid a knife down on the ground in between them and rolled up his sleeve, exposing the splint around his left forehand. "Can you hide that in there?", he silently asked, showing her the splint.

Hesitatingly, Teddy took the knife into her hands. It was black ceramic knife, flat enough. She had never been asked before to hide a knife in a splint.  
"That could work", she inhaled, holding her breath. There was a certain glance in his eyes, one that she saw for the first time. Beneath all the sadness, it said _if I go down, I'll go down fighting._

.

.


	14. Chapter 14

Teddy couldn't imagine what he was going through. Or what was going on in his head, behind these blue eyes.  
From time to time, she dared to have a look at his face, while she put a last layer of bandages around his left forearm. The last time that she'd done something simple as putting in arm in plaster was years ago, but though it was simple, she was out of practice, plus, it didn't make it easier that she had to hide a ceramic knife and a plastic explosives between the layers. It was funny, but C4 was of the exact same color than the plaster and it was even easier to hide than the knife.

"How do you want to ignite that stuff?", she asked him, after a while. "Don't you need fuses for that?" Some lessons of her military basic training were still very vivid, like the one where they were introduced to explosives. She had hated that lesson. And she had hated it as well now, to touch that stuff. Everybody said that it was safe to touch the white mass, but knowing what sheer power lay there, right in front of her, made her feel uneasy, especially when having to remodel it or press it flat. She hadn't said a word and had just done it, for him.

"They would find the fuses right away. I'm sure they'll use a metal detector.", he answered, looking from all sides if somebody could see the pocket in which the ceramic knife was hidden. "maybe something will come up. There are some things which I could use as a fuse." Trying to improvise was the only idea he had.

"Do you want to blow up the whole ship?"

He sadly smiled. "No. That amount is not even enough to make a dent in such a hull." He didn't know yet what he would do with it or if he'd be able to ignite it at all. "It would take down a room with ten people, maximum. A freighter that size is almost built like a fortress."

She stowed away the dressing materials and came back over to him. He was still sitting at one of the chairs, holding up his arm to let the plaster of the splint get dry. He was drowned in thoughts, staring into the far.  
Slowly she sat down on the other chair, opposite the small table. It was 3 a.m. in the morning right now. 5 hours to go until the exchange. She had never seen anyone who was willingly going to face death, or even worse. She found no words to say. Wish him luck? What for? He'd be on a Chinese freighter, travelling across the Pacific Ocean, all alone with enemies.  
"Do you have any chance to get off the ship?", she finally dared to ask, afraid of an honest answer.

He took a deep breath. "They'll be loading for five hours and then they'll leave the port, travelling west at a speed of about 15 knots. If I manage to get off in the first six or seven hours there could be a chance to reach the coast." He got silent again.

Teddy feared the worst. "Will you even try to get off?"

He slid his chair a bit to the right until he could lean against the wall. "I will, don't worry.", he closed his eyes but even though he was tired, he just couldn't rest. "If I get a chance to.", he added, "They know that the first eight hours are the most critical ones. They're gonna grill me right in the beginning to keep me from running, even if they have to break my legs for that." He had no illusions about what was coming.

A cold shiver ran down her spine. She had only asked him because she wanted to have something to hope for – she desperately wanted to hear him say that he had a chance to flee again and that he had a chance to return.

He could read her thoughts. "Don't get your hopes up.", he silently added, resting his head against the wall.  
He heard that she started to cry. Even though she tried to do it in silence, he heard her uneven breaths. "Don't, Teddy", he murmured, leaning over the table, resting his head on his right arm in a more comfortable position. "I'm not worth the tears."

She wiped them away and stood up. She couldn't stand to look at him.

He watched her back. She was still crying… of course, she was. This wasn't anything that words could make go by.  
"Teddy", he tiredly called her name.

"What?", she spat, still not turning around.

"Come over", he said, adding "please"

She wiped the tears off her face and took a deep breath before she turned around. There he sat, tiredly leaning over the table, resting his head on his arm. Their eyes met, but she could hardly stand to look into them, knowing that he was going into an almost certain death. "I'm a doctor, Jack. I am used to _saving_ people, I am used to having _chances,_ no matter how little they are", she began "I would like to scream and shout at you, that you should get up and run for your life!", she hissed. She shook her head and went over to him. "I know you won't.", she whispered, looking down at him.  
Tiredly she sat down across him, also resting her head on her arms, on the table.

Finally, she managed to get a grip of herself again. Their heads were only few inches apart. _Damnit, run for your life,_ she still thought, as she looked into his eyes.

"I won't let her down", he whispered, thinking of the last time that he'd seen Audrey. The memories of her were the one thing that had kept him alive. And they'd do it again.

"She must be someone special." She tried to guess how the woman would be who made him give his life for her.

"She is" Thinking of Audrey even drew a little smile on his face. "Can I ask you one last favor, Teddy? Will you take care of her?"

She froze. "What do you mean with that?"

"I'm sure they haven't treated her nicely", he began, and this time it was him, who was close to tears, saying "I hope not as bad as me but she'll need medical attention. The DoD team coordinating the exchange already ordered a standby ambulance and a friend of mine rerouted the call and made sure it's gonna be one of yours, leaving from here. You'll get a call in the morning, Teddy, requesting you to be on board and I will go with you. That's the only way how I can get into the pier without anyone noticing. I swear, you will not be dragged into this any further, I give you my word. You're gonna stay in the car and wait until it's all over and they hand her over to you."

Frozen stiff, she listened and tried to imagine what his plan looked like. "Why don't you just call DoD to let them pick you up here?"

"Too dangerous. The Chinese could get to me first the exchange won't happen and we lose the last chance to get Audrey out." He had thought it all through. Every possibility, every danger, every possible change in plans. "Will you take care of her?", he asked her again.

"Jack, I took an oath to care, I'm a doctor. Of course I will."

"I know you did… and you're a good one. But that was not what I meant." He didn't know how to tell Teddy what he wanted her to do. He didn't know it either what he actually wanted. "When I came here, Teddy, you saved my life. But you did far more for me… I'm pretty sure that's not on your usual job description" He slid his left hand slowly over the table, until he could grab hers, "You're the only friend I have right now.", he spoke, looking into her eyes for a last time, before he rested his head to sleep.

She knew what he wanted from her. He wanted her to be there for Audrey, to be that friend, like she had been for him.  
"I'll be there for her", she answered, knowing that it was big promise that she had to keep. "You have to get some rest before tomorrow", she added, standing back up again, "I know a place."

* * *

They repeated the routine for the CCTV cameras… if anyone would ever look at the tapes. He let her go ahead and followed her closely behind, through the empty corridors of the nightly hospital. He carried his jacket over his arm, making it look like he was hiding a gun thereunder, threatening her.

She brought them to one of the furnished staff rooms, closing the door behind them, locking it. "Lie down.", she told him, pointing at the only bed in the small room.

"Where are you gonna sleep?"

Teddy watched him place the gun right next to his pillow. He lay in bed, fully clothed, ready to jump up and defend himself upon the slightest evidence of threat.  
"This time it's my turn to stay awake.", she silently answered, sitting down on a chair, next to the bed. "It's only four hours until you have to get up."

He was way too tired to protest or even say anything.  
He closed his eyes and hoped that sleep would get him faster than all the thoughts about the future, which would only make him cry himself to sleep. Many nights of darkness were to follow. The good ones were over, for once and for all.

.

.

 _OMG, that was hard to write... poor Jack, but he has to suffer... otherwise this wouldn't be 24, right?_


	15. Chapter 15

Sitting in the rear of an ambulance, Jack watched how they passed the entrance gates to the pier. Teddy sat across him, watching him pick at the seam of the splint. He had to be nervous, she guessed, but fumbling around at his hands was the only thing that showed it a little.

The closer the got to their final destination, the quieter he got, too. He took off the white coat which she'd grabbed from Owen's locker to disguise him as medical personnel, and instead, he put on his black jacket again.

Teddy tried not to look at him and tried not to let any emotions show. She was afraid and nervous as well.

A heavily armed agent stepped out behind a few crates and told them to enter an old warehouse. In there, there were even more DoD members, waiting for the exchange to go down.

"That's their basis. You're gonna park here, wait here, don't leave the car and do what they tell you.", he silently said to her, while he was spying over the driver's shoulder, trying to get the picture. "You're safe here."

That wasn't her primary concern. She knew that she was safe, among half a battalion of DoD agents and soldiers.

Jack checked on both his guns again, but he was sure that Heller's men would take them away, in the moment they'd see them.

"Jack?", Teddy asked.

He looked up, hoping that she wouldn't get emotional on him now. That wouldn't help at all.  
But instead, he found her calm, and she was holding a small syringe in her hand.

He wasn't sure what she was up to. "Are you trying to knock me out?"

She slightly shook her head. "You should let me give you that." She had had enough time in the past four hours, to get a grip of herself again and she wanted to help him in the only way she could, "you said that the next five hours will decide whether you can get off that ship or not and they will try to hurt you beyond imagination", she began, "this takes hold for about five hours."

Hesitatingly he slid a bit closer, bringing his right arm already into her reach "You know that I have a history with this", he breathed. It could only be morphine, what she was holding in her hands there. "Won't I get high? Tired?"

"This is a clinical drug, Jack", she took his arm and brushed the sleeve back, "You won't get a high and the effect sets in way slower when I give you this it subcutaneously." She didn't leave this up to debate and injected it into his arm. A few seconds later, she looked up, into his eyes. "See?"

He tried to judge if he felt something… actually, nothing yet.

"I'm a trauma surgeon, Jack, I know what I'm doing.", she said, placing another two injections into his hand. "If you can hide them somehow, take them with you. Metal detectors won't find them. You're gonna need them."

He had a look at the two small injections in his hand. While he had already put up with dying in Cheng's hands, she probably had been up all night, thinking about his chances to flee, trying to find ways how to increase them.

"This is the only way how I can help you", she silently said, looking into his eyes. "You have to go now."  
No, she wouldn't let her emotions get the better of her. No.

He hid one of the syringes behind the waistband of his trousers, and the other one somewhere else.  
Teddy hoped that he could use them. She had seen soldiers do unspeakable things, when they'd been on morphine, after getting hurt.

"We'll be waiting for your return.", she said, almost wanting to give him a little push towards the rear door.

He jumped out of the vehicle,  
She wouldn't have been able to keep her cool for any longer.

Jack found himself standing in the middle of the warehouse. One by one, the soldiers around realized that not the doctor named Hunt, which they had on their access list, had stumbled out of that ambulance, but their primary target.

Teddy sank to the cold metal floor in the rear of the ambulance, leaning against the back door. She could hear clearly, what was going on out there. Slides of guns racking, probably because of being pointed at him, soldiers who were shouting at him to raise his hands behind his head and stay.

Something got dropped on the floor.  
She was sure that it was his gun, which they'd just taken from him.

"I want to talk to Secretary Heller.", Jack spat at the man who took his hands, one by one, to cuff them behind his back.

"All in its proper time", the soldier hissed back at him, thrusting him rudely against the rear of the ambulance car, to let another one search him for weapons. They found the holster at his ankle and removed it.

As they were done and let him turn back around, Jack saw a black limousine come into the warehouse. Two soldiers were fixing his already cuffed arms, one at each side, ready to keep him in place, whatever he'd do.  
Was that Cheng? Was this it, were they bringing Audrey? He dismissed the thought. No, Cheng would never come into here, letting them surround him at all sides.  
The car stopped in front of them, the rear door opened.

It was Heller.

Jack felt a cold shiver as the old man stepped out and looked at him.  
He hadn't seen him in 14 months.  
He was the reason that Heller's daughter had fallen into enemy hands.

As the old man slowly started walking over to him, he knew that nothing good was about to come.

Heller stopped, a few feet away from Jack, looking coldly into his eyes.  
After a while, he gave the secret service agent who was with him a signal.

The man went past him and punched Jack in his face. Right onto his nose and cheekbone that had just started to heal.

Jack bent over, spitting blood.

The agent stood there, awaiting new orders.

Heller just nodded and the agent struck him again, into his gut.

Letting out a scream of pain, Jack's knees gave in, letting him collapse into the hands of the two soldiers who still held him. The secret service man couldn't know that he'd hit his surgery wound. With full force.  
He hung in the men's arms, wondering why he was still conscious. The morphine, maybe?

Heller stepped closer. Dismissively, he watched the man who had saved his life bleed in front of him. He couldn't forgive him for what had happened to Audrey. "Wipe the blood off his face and get him ready.", he ordered, leaning over to Jack for a last time, "I can't wait to see you rot in hell, Jack."

Teddy held her breath, listening what was going on, just behind her back. She'd felt the car shake when they'd thrown him against it. She knew Heller's face, from TV and from a speech that he'd held once. It was unbelievable that this man was just out there now.  
She was trembling, and she didn't even realize.

* * *

His hands still cuffed behind his back, Jack was led through the building. Blood was still dripping from his nose, he felt it, and he could taste it.  
A group of soldiers had gathered at one of the exits, he was given to them.

Finally, they led him out of the building.

The morning sun almost blinded him. Behind a row of containers, they were walking him down the pier. From time to time, between the containers, he could see the ship, already at the port. A gigantic heap of steel, orange, partly dirty and rusty, carrying twenty yards high Chinese symbols on its side.

Other than the soldiers, a man in a black suit was also with him. The negotiator. He seemed to be in command.

They stopped, pushing him against one of the freight containers.  
 _Wipe that blood off and get him ready,_ Jack heard the negotiator say. And then the guy was already gone.  
Rudely, one of the soldiers wiped the blood off his face, not caring about the fact that he was hurting him even more by doing so.  
Jack tried to look around.  
Snipers waited on the roof. He could see barrels of at least five rifles, all pointed at the ship which was behind him, behind this container. He was sure that they'd fire at him and Cheng's men, if the slightest thing was to go wrong. For sure, at least as many Chinese shooters were positioned somewhere on deck of the ship, also pointing their guns at him.

He closed his eyes, trying to listen. He heard nothing, except for water, washing around the ship and the pier and trucks on the other end of the pier, about a hundred yards away.  
The negotiator was out of audible range.

That was it.  
The thought of Cheng, over there, waiting for him, made him almost get sick. It hadn't felt that real in the night, that he'd have to go back. But it felt damn real now.  
He ripped his eyes open again, agitated by a sudden fear.  
The thought of being handed over all at once scared the living daylights out of him.

Suddenly, the negotiator was back, building himself up in front of him "'re you ready?"

Hell no, he wasn't.  
His knees almost gave in, as the soldiers brought him around the corner, to face the Chinese. The negotiator stepped behind his back, grabbing his hands, to uncuff them. "You walk straight ahead. You meet the other person halfway, that's the edge of the pier, where the gangway begins. No talking, no looking back, you don't try anything or you're both dead." As he had taken the cuffs off, he also ripped the jacket off him to let the Chinese see that he was unarmed. "Hold your hands where we and they can see them.", he hissed at Jack, standing right behind him. "Now walk"

He got pushed out of the safe zone behind the containers, where all the soldiers and the negotiator took place.

Slowly he strode forward.

In front of him lay the pier, about twenty yards, and on the edge of the pier, a gangway, ten feet wide covered another twenty yards, ending in a giant cargo hatch.

Cheng's men pushed their prisoner also out of their cover.

There she was. He saw only a contour in the dark.  
Jack made his first step towards the edge of the pier.  
She did the same, after being yelled at, in Chinese.

When she stepped into the daylight, he saw her, for the first time in 14 months.  
He whispered her name, as if to aver that this was really happening...  
 _Audrey._

.

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 _J/A reunion... please R &R!_


	16. Chapter 16

She was a giant magnet. One that pulled him to that ship, closer to Cheng.  
But also closer to her, to the edge of the pier, where they'd meet.

Step after step, he went forward, just slow enough that they'd reach the mid-point at the same time.  
It broke his heart to see that she also walked that slowly, but because of not being able to walk any faster. Part of him desperately wanted to know what they had done to her, part of him was afraid to hear the truth.

Ten yards to the gangway. Twenty still between them.

Cheng's men had surely instructed her the same way as the negotiator had told him. She didn't dare speaking. She didn't dare looking around or back. Her whole body was trembling awaiting to be shot at, from any side.

She had recognized him, the very first moment in which she had stepped out onto the gangway. He looked like hell – rests of smeared blood on his chin, his cheek black and swollen like he'd just gotten out of a bar fight. His wore a long sleeved shirt that probably covered all the rest… she only saw his hands and wrists, that he held slightly away from his body, to show that he was unarmed. One hand was bandaged, the other one in a splint.

She starred into his eyes but didn't dare say anything. The guards had made that very clear. Every other noise that she heard, guessing it would come from somewhere behind her back, made her jump.

Five yards until reaching the pier. Ten still separating them.

Jack wished that he had thought of what to say to her. She was afraid of talking, he saw that, and they had told him, too, that he must not talk to her. But couldn't just walk by and say nothing. That was not an option to him.  
He saw how afraid she was. After all, she probably didn't even know what was going on here, she'd just been brought out of her cell and suddenly there he was, and she was facing a pier and row of containers where she clearly saw that there were guns everywhere, pointing in her direction.

He stayed at his side of the way. Touching her was off limits.

Two more steps and she'd be able to hear whatever he'd whisper to her.

One.  
Two.

"You're home, Audrey.", he whispered, just so loud that she'd hear it. He desperately wanted her to know that the men, waiting for her on the other side of the pier were not the enemy, no matter how dangerous they looked like. He had to let her know that she was on US soil again, if she made just one more step, off the gangway. "You are home", he told her, once more, as he set foot on the gangway. She was just two yards away, he could see her cried out eyes now clearly, her bare feet, slowly making the way, step after step.

And then she was already past him. He went on, one or two steps faster because for a moment he was afraid that she'd turn around or do anything else that would be stupid, if he stayed in her proximity.

Turning his head around was off limits, so he had to look forward again.

The cargo hatch was a mighty black hole, looking at him as if wanted to swallow him up. Cheng's men made use of the sunlight and the shadows. He couldn't see anyone of them until he went another five yards towards the ship.

He reminded himself to walk slowly, not to reach the ship before Audrey would have reached the other side of the pier. She couldn't walk as fast as he could.  
The rails to his left and right were pretty low…. He could jump over, into the water. It would be only one or two steps, to save his life.

He threw the thought away just as quickly as it had come. That would just make the sniper up on the deck shoot her. He was not allowed to flee, not even try, until she'd be safe.

Slowly he went on. Deathwards.

When he was only two yards away from the hatch any more he could see men on both sides, waiting in the shadow, pointing their guns at him.  
One more step, and he knew they'd grab him and tear him into the ship.  
This was his last chance to dare to look back.  
He had to know if Audrey was safe. He simply had to.

He stopped walking and held eye contact with the Chinese men with guns. Slowly, he turned around to look back, striding backwards, further towards the ship.  
It didn't take them more than a second or two, until they stormed forward, grabbed his arms and something dashed down on his head, knocking him out.  
She had reached the containers. She was safe.  
That was the only light, when the world around him went dark.

As Audrey reached the gap between these two containers, she saw a man, waiting for her. He wore a black suit and a dark sunglasses, like one from the secret service.  
Two soldiers with bulletproof shields came closer to her, ready to guard her, as soon as she'd pass an invisible, unmarked line which had been drawn. They were waiting for something. A signal? A shot? Jack to enter the ship, fall into _their_ hands?  
She knew that she'd never see him again, once he stepped over the end of that gangway.  
She was so afraid of turning back.  
But she simply had to have a last look at him.

When she stopped walking, the man in the suit got worried, gesturing her to come over to him, to keep going. He even took off his sunglasses, she could see his worried look. Was he fearing that she'd might run back?  
Never.  
She just wanted to have a last look…. The soldiers with the bulletproof shields started rushing towards her, as she turned around.

She only got a glimpse of him, before the bulletproof panels blocked her view, of how they knocked him down. How he fell backwards, over the rim of the cargo hatch. Into the shade.

* * *

As Jack awoke, he found himself lying on the cold and wet ground of a room in the bowel of the ship. Judging from the noise, it was somewhere close to the engine room. How long had been out? Was it already too late, were they already miles away from the coast?  
No, couldn't be. The engines of the ship were also running when it was in the harbor, to keep the electric power up and to heat the fuel. Their noise was way less than he was used to.

His hands were cuffed behind his back. They had taken his shoes and socks away, and his shirt. Lying there, half naked, he felt how cold the metal floor was.  
He moved his hands a little. The split was still around his arm, but they had removed the bandages around his right arm and the ones around his stomach, exposing the sutures on his belly. Were they afraid he'd hang himself? Well, the thought was not even that far-fetched.

He felt blood running over his face. Where the hell did it come from?  
As he lay there and thought back, he remembered how they had hit him on his head with something, once he had reached the hatch. He had collapsed, but not for long. Then they already cuffed his hands and gave him hell.  
Five men against a one whose hands were cuffed behind his back. What a fair fight.

He tried to move his limbs. It still worked, though it hurt.  
Fresh blood was still running over his cheeks. Probably from a laceration on his head.

Lying in the darkness, he wiped it away from his cheek, into his shoulder and waited for more blood to come. It did.  
That meant that the beating hadn't been that long ago. He knew when wounds would stop bleeding. No wound had ever bled for more than two hours. Plus an hour for the beating meant that the ship was probably still at the pier.

He needed to get his arms to the front… it cost him some effort to do that. The chain between the cuffs was long enough, it left enough space to get his legs through.

Breathing heavily, he rolled over, pulling himself to his knees. God, everything hurt. His arms, his legs, his back and his head.  
He dared to touch the still bleeding laceration, feeling that half of his hair was wet with blood.

Resting his weight on his arms and his knees, he halted to catch his breath. The place he'd been lying was all smeared in red. It was a miracle that he was awake, after all this. The once white splint around his left forearm was also smudged with blood, and dirt. Jack lay down again, onto the cold floor, this time facing the door to the room. There was a little window in the door, covered by a grating, through which they could look in.

He told himself to lie still, act like he was still unconscious and find out in what intervals the guards would check on him, and while he was watching the door, he already started picking at the splint, trying to get to his knife. The plaster had broken in numerous place during the beating, making it easier to break it. It wasn't even that hard to chip it away, piece by piece.

In the end, he didn't know how long he had been lying there until the guard passed the window for the first time, looking in through the grating, leaving again after a few moments.  
He started to count the seconds, then the minutes.

After twenty minutes, the sound of the engine changed.  
What had first been a shallow growl became a louder noise. The guard passed again. Twenty minutes later, the sound of the engine became a loud roar, when the towboat of Seattle released the freighter Shuan Xi into the high seas.

.

.


	17. Chapter 17

What had started off as an annoying day had finally turned into an awful one for Owen Hunt. At first, he hadn't found his ID card in his locker, and neither had he found the white coat which he usually wore and where the ID had been attached to. He was sure that he hadn't left it somewhere… but it was gone, without a trace.  
Then, Teddy hadn't showed up for her shift. She never was late. They had tried to call her, but she hadn't answered, neither on her mobile phone, nor at home. But in the end, he'd had no time to worry about her, since had to do the surgery which had actually been planned on her duty roster.  
As he finally came out of the OR, two hours later, he found his staff gathered around the main counter, and they all looked worried somehow, one of the security guards was here, too. They had called hospital security while he had been in the OR, to ask when Teddy had clocked out, finding out that she hadn't even officially left, ever since her shift had started, more than 24 hours ago. The security guards quickly checked the video feeds from the previous night, discovering the shocking pictures, which he showed them on his laptop.

1:45 a.m. - A guy grabbed her, in the middle of the corridor, holding a gun to her head as he had dragged her into one of the offices.  
3:50 a.m. - Two hours later, they came out of that office again. He went behind her, a jacket hung over his right arm, looking like it covered a gun, which he was pointing at her. They disappeared into one of the crew rooms where they stayed for a few hours.  
7:40 a.m. – They left the crew room, again he was walking behind, probably hiding a gun under the jacket that hung over his right forearm. He obviously told her to go to the locker room. She opened one of the lockers and took out a white coat an ID, which she gave to him. Just for a moment, the guy put the jacket which hung over his right arm away, to put on the white coat. Now they could see the gun in his hand, pointing at Teddy. He covered it again and they went downstairs, over to the driveway for the ambulance cars. A driver and a paramedic were already waiting. Teddy greeted them and they seemed to talk for a few moments, thereafter she and the guy who was still secretly pointing a gun at her got into the back of the ambulance car. They got out of sight of the video cameras.

Owen froze as he saw these pictures. Teddy… abducted?  
"Can you rewind this?", he asked the security guard, "To the part where they were in the locker room?" That was the only angle where the cameras had recorded the aggressor's face.  
He had a closer look. Somehow, the guy seemed familiar, but he didn't know where to put him.

"That's our John Doe patient from two weeks ago.", one of the nurses said. They had been looking at the pictures for half an hour already, and one of them had recognized him. "The one with the two bullets in his abdomen"

 _Holy Christ…_ , he thought, aloud. Of course he recognized him now. He was surprised that this guy was even still alive.  
"Can you print that out for me?", he asked the security guard, "And send it to the police, right away, I want them to find her!", he hissed, tearing his hair. Teddy… in the hands of that guy. He didn't remember when he'd been worried about her like this for the last time. But it was hard blow to see this.

"Dr. Hunt?", one of the assistants approached him, the phone in her hands, "The emergency room is calling for you", she said, offering the phone to him.

"Not now", he rebuffed her, walking a few steps up and down the corridor.

She talked to them but after a minute she came over to him again, "You should really take this call. Dr. Altman is coming in a few minutes. She just called in"

He harshly ripped the phone out of her hands and they confirmed that Teddy was coming back, with an ambulance car, and that they wanted to have him down there, too.  
"You follow me. And I want five security guards at the entrance. Armed.", he hissed at the guard who was still here, and then he started to run downstairs.

* * *

He wouldn't have needed the security guards.  
When they reached the back entrance, he, one assistant doctor and the five hospital security guards, the first approaching car was a Humvee, thereafter an ambulance, followed by a black limousine and another Humvee. It was a full-scale army transport.  
Soldiers poured out of the Humvees, securing the area, as the back doors of the ambulance car opened up.

The two paramedics got the stretcher out, a woman on it.  
Owen was relieved to see Teddy jump out of the car, too, but he still didn't get the picture.

They wheeled their female patient in, past him, followed by Teddy.  
As she was passing by, she thrust the white coat with his ID into his hands. "Follow me. I'll explain later", she hissed at him, almost tearing him along.  
Actually, she didn't know yet what she would explain to him. The whole story? About her, helping Jack? Or the short version, that he'd kidnapped her yesterday night, forcing her to go on this trip? She still had a few minutes left to decide. Now, they first had to look after their patient.

Owen looked back for a moment, to see who had gotten out of that black limousine, following them into the hospital. A bunch of black clothed men, probably secret service, and in the middle of them…

He almost stumbled, as he recognized the elderly man.

"That's Heller!", he hissed at Teddy. He couldn't really believe what was going on around here suddenly. Of course he recognized the Secretary of Defense.

She grabbed him by his coat to keep him from staring backwards. "That's his daughter.", she whispered into his ear while walking.

"Prepare a private room for her.", she told him, "I'll be there in a minute" She desperately needed to freshen up a little bit before she'd go there. Thank god, Owen didn't follow her, as she went over to the locker rooms just to have minute for herself.

She closed the door behind her, leaning against it, taking a deep breath.  
This all was too much to come to terms with now. She realized that she should have been tired after working for 16 hours, then being up all night and being here again. But the adrenaline caused by this morning kept her wide awake and her mind racing.

She wondered where Jack was.  
She wondered if he was okay… if he was still alive. Probably yes. If they would have wanted to kill him, they'd have done it long ago. But okay? No way, the chances that he was still okay were close to zero.

Audrey hadn't said a single word up to now.  
Two DoD agents had brought her to the ambulance and had handed her over to her.  
She'd done what she always did – given her something to relax and search her for visible injuries, but there hadn't been any. She didn't have any bleeding wounds. She had a few bruises, her ankle was swollen black, but that didn't need any urgent treatment. They could also take a closer look after arriving at the hospital.

So in the end, Teddy had just sat there, silently, monitoring her patient. She had wanted to ask her something, tell her something, but in the end she hadn't found any words to say to that woman who was a complete stranger to her but who she knew so much about, after listening to Jack talk about her.  
She just watched her, figuring, that if her hair wasn't that unkempt and clothes were different, the tears and the dirt washed off her face… that woman would really look a lot like her, somehow.

Teddy took a deep breath and went over to her locker, putting on fresh clothes to wear. She had to go back to Audrey. A female doctor should look at her, and for sure not Owen, who could be really rude sometimes.

As she reached the room, she found Heller and his secret service men waiting in front of the door.  
God, that guy gave her a chill. She remembered hearing him talk to Jack, wishing him in hell, his men beating him without any justified reason. She hadn't seen them do it, but she had heard it. Probably it was one of the guys standing over there.  
She had to face them.  
Straighten yourself, put on a smile, she told herself as she went over to Heller.

"Sir, my name is Theodora Altman, I'll be having a look at your daughter.", she said to him, shaking hands.

"James Heller.", he answered, "So, I see that my men already put you in the picture. Good."

She froze, innerly. No, nobody had put her in the picture, damnit! Nobody had officially told her that the woman in there was his daughter! She had to be more careful, with these agents, or her little secret of helping Jack would leak out, eventually.  
"Yes, they have.", she hurriedly answered, trying to play her role in the most credible way she could.

"When do you think can I see her?"

It was the question of a worried father.

"Sir, I'll have a look at her, check her out for injuries, I guess it won't take longer than half an hour or 45 minutes. I already saw on the way over here, that she is…" well, how should she call it? Not in Jack's shape? No. "… in a quite good condition."

"Thank god", he breathed, sending a silent prayer towards heaven to thank for that.

"I'll call you in as soon as I'm finished.", she answered and left him back there, entering Audrey's room.  
That were the words of a loving father. Spoken with a soft voice, full of worries. But yet, she couldn't forget the other words that he'd said to Jack today.  
Pushing him out of her mind for the moment, she went over to Audrey, who now probably lay in the most comfortable bed that she'd seen in months. Two nurses had stripped the messy clothes of her and had given her some hospital gowns.

As Teddy looked at her, she couldn't really focus. She just heard Jack's voice in the back of her head, telling her about the ways in which they had tortured him.  
"Audrey?", she silently asked, standing next to the bed.

She stirred. It was the first time in weeks that somebody called her by her first name.

 _Careful,_ Teddy thought. Nobody had ever told her officially what her name was. Not Heller, not the DoD agents. Damnit, she really had to be more careful.  
"How are you feeling?", she asked, cautiously stepping closer. She had been kidnapped, probably she didn't trust anyone any more, not even the people wearing scrubs and white coats.

Audrey still didn't talk to her.

They looked into each other's eyes.

"Will you let me see that?", Teddy softly spoke, pointing at Audrey's left hand. The ankle looked bruised and swollen.

Hesitatingly, Audrey lifted her hand, to let her take it.

Teddy tried to be as careful as possible as she examined it. Maybe it wouldn't be that hard after all, to build up some trust.

The door to the room opened and Owen came in, asking "Teddy?"

Audrey pulled her hand back at once.

 _Damnit,_ Teddy thought, _I had just gotten her to let me touch her and then he comes in…_

"What?", she spat, turning around to him.

"Will you now please explain to me what happened last night?", he rudely asked.

 _Oh god, I still owe him an answer,_ Teddy realized. She had postponed it but she couldn't postpone it forever.

He wordlessly handed her the picture that the security guard had printed out for him. The one of the CCTV camera in the locker room, showing Jack, pointing a gun at her. "Who is this?"

"That's our John Doe patient from two weeks ago", Teddy slowly began, taking the picture out of her hands. Jack. "He's somehow connected to these DoD guys", she lied, trying to play the innocent. She couldn't fulfill her promise and be there for Audrey if they found out that she had been helping Jack, who was obviously Heller's enemy. "He came here last night and took your ID to get past some security parameters, hiding in the ambulance car.", she murmured.

"Are you alright?", Owen worriedly asked her.

At first she didn't even realize why he was that worried. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?", she answered.

"That guy pointed a gun at you" Owen was worried that she was so calm. Was it her own shock, hadn't she realized it in what grave danger she had been? "Are you fit to work?", he asked.

Now Teddy realized why he was so worried. "I'm okay.", she ensured him. She could hardly tell him that the gun on the picture wasn't even loaded. "Can I finish here now? We can talk later."

"Of course.", he sighed, taking the surveillance picture out of her hands again. "What do you want me to tell the police?"

Teddy shrugged. "I don't know. It looks like this some intelligence matter. Probably you should give that to the DoD agents."

"Okay."

Right as she wanted to turn back to Audrey, he grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to turn back and look into his eyes. "Are you really, fully, alright, Teddy?", he asked again.

She had never seen him worry so much about her.  
"Yes.", she silently answered, hoping that he'd finally leave. He did.

Drowned in thoughts, she turned back to Audrey, took her hand into hers again and continued to examine her.

"He would have never hurt you.", Audrey silently said. She had seen the picture for a short moment, as Teddy had held it in her hands.

Teddy looked up into her eyes.  
Her first words.

"Never.", Audrey added.

Teddy felt her heart sink. They were finally talking, but about a subject that she had never believed possible.  
"I know.", she breathlessly said, damning herself already for having said that. It didn't fit the lies that she'd just told Owen.  
But if she wanted to keep talking to Audrey, she knew, she had to tell her the truth.

.

.

 _Well, it feels a little strange to have a Kim Raver character (Teddy) talk to another Kim Raver character (Audrey) - but I'd like to solve that little problem by saying that they look very much alike, but not the same...  
_ _I'd really like them to get along..._


	18. Chapter 18

"How would _you_ know?", Audrey asked her, her voice shaking.

Teddy hesitated with answering. "He said that." She looked over her shoulder to check if they were really alone in the room, "Audrey, I know you've been through much in the past months,… but…" She tore a chair closer to the bed and sat down. "If I tell you that all then I have to be sure that this stays between the two of us."

Audrey sat up in bed.  
Usually, Teddy would have told her to stay down, before having completed examining her, but right now, she didn't even care. Audrey seemed to be in not such a bad shape as Jack had been.

"Why?", Audrey asked.

"This is hard to explain" She didn't know where to start.

"Is this about Jack?"  
As Teddy didn't answer in an instant, Audrey had her confirmation that this was about something that had to do with Jack. "Tell me", she implored her.

"Only if you give me your word that the things I'm gonna say will stay between the two of us." After all, she was risking her career with helping Jack.

Audrey couldn't hide how worried she was, and how eager to find out anything which had to do with Jack. "I give you my word, Dr. Altman.", she whispered, slipping closer, on the bed. "Tell me… did you see him?", she implored her again.

"Jack was on the same ship like you were."

Audrey shook her head, vehemently, "No, he was brought to ship and exchanged for me, just an hour ago. He was not on the ship..."

"Listen to me…", Teddy interrupted her, "You _were_ on the same ship. It left the port of Shanghai about 30 days ago, arriving here at Seattle eleven days ago. Then it travelled down the US west coast to San Diego, thereafter to Los Angeles and via Seattle it will go back to Shanghai. As it reached Seattle for the first time, Jack grabbed a chance he got and fled the ship. He jumped overboard at the pier, but the Chinese shot at him. Dock workers pulled him out of the water and he was brought here." She saw how Audrey's eyes widened, so she reassured her, "We were able to get the bullets out and stop the bleeding. He survived it."  
Teddy saw, how Audrey relaxed again, after hearing this. Hesitatingly, she brought her hands forward, onto the bed, grabbing Audrey's. "Two days after he came here, agents arrived, looking for him. He was sure they were Chinese agents looking for him, to grab him back, and so he ran off."

"What? Two days after…?"

Teddy nodded _yes._ "And now that's… that are the things that really have to stay between the two of us", she continued, "He was in no shape to survive out there. He came to me one night, as I left from here, asking me for help. I let him stay at my place, gave him some medical attention and… he recovered. Nobody knows this, except for you and me now. He spent there quite some time, Audrey, and he told me a lot of things about you, that's why I know who you are, and what your name is."

Two silent tears ran over her cheeks. She felt like she needed to thank Dr. Altman for having done all that for him.

"He left, yesterday morning. I already thought I'd never see him again because he said that he wanted to disappear for good, because he feared that the Chinese would continue their search for him. But in the night he came back here, that was when he threatened me with the gun, where these surveillance pictures come from that you just saw… he did it just for the cameras, to let no one find out that we know each other. He told me that he had contacted someone of CTU, to hear that you're okay before he'd disappear into hiding forever. That was when he found out that you had gone to China at all. They told him that you both should have been exchanged against a man named Xian Lei Zen five days ago in Los Angeles and that it didn't happen because he had fled the ship. He was so sorry for messing up all these plans to get you out of there. He hadn't known them at that point. On the ship he had heard that they wanted to exchange him for a man named Xian Lei Zen and he panicked and ran, because he figured that the government would never exchange him for that man and that they only wanted to get a chance to silence him. He came here last night and wanted my help to disguise as a doctor today morning, to get to the pier in a standby ambulance that nobody would check. That's where I last saw him."

Horrified, Audrey listened to this, shaking her head. "It went all wrong…", she whispered. "It went all wrong."

"What went wrong?"

"Everything", she whispered, shaking her head and staring into the far. "I should have known he would escape…", she sobbed, starting to tear her hair. "I should have planned for that, too."

"Why should you have known? You couldn't have known this exchange was gonna go down at all.", Teddy stood up, trying to get closer, as her patient was short before dissolving in tears.

Audrey shook her head, slowly leaning towards Teddy. "Now this is something that has to stay between the two of us, too", she whispered, looking into her eyes. "Because nobody else knows that."  
All Tensed up, Teddy slightly nodded.

"I planned this exchange.", she spoke. "Three months ago."

* * *

Jack looked at the body of the dead guard that was lying in front of him. God, that man had given him hell on so many months… it was a real pleasure to see him lie there.  
His plan had worked out so far. It had taken some time to pick the plaster of the splint away to get to the knife. The guard had walked past his door twice during that time, so it meant that they were already three hours and probably 40 miles away from the harbor. He needed to do something now, to get off that ship, or otherwise he wouldn't make it back to the coast alive. He was running out of ideas anyway, how to get back to the coast. Jumping off board was one possibility, with a life vest… but it the cold February sea would probably kill him after a few minutes. Fleeing with the only lifeboat on board was not really an option either. They'd see this right away and he'd be a sitting duck in that orange boat with no motor.

He had changed clothes already with the guard, and now he dragged him into the corner of the cell, resting him in such a position that from the outside, another guard could only see the man's legs, looking like they were his, in these dirty and blood-smudged blue jeans.  
Everything should look normal from the outside, to give him at least a few minutes, if not half an hour of advantage.

When he had finally locked the cell again, he made his way down the barely lighted corridor. He needed to get to the deck, somehow, if not to jump then at least to see where they already were.  
An emergency staircase looked promising.

So far, he hadn't seen anyone around here except for the guard. There were probably only 20 to 30 persons on this 250 yards long ship – but yet he checked on the gun which he had taken from the guard, and the knife in his pocket.  
After climbing up four floors, there was finally a door with a porthole.  
He gazed outside, finding the coastline of a piece of land that he guessed to be Vancouver island in the distance. They were probably passing the strait of Juan de Fuca right now, and soon they'd be in international waters.  
But not yet.

The coastline of Canada was more than ten miles away. He guessed that the US coastline would also be at least another 15 miles away. He couldn't jump off and try his luck. Somehow, he had to force this ship to turn back.

* * *

"Sir, you can come in, now.", Teddy silently spoke, holding the door to Audrey's room open for Heller.  
The old man thanked her and went past her, into the room.

She could feel how tense he was, to see his daughter again, for the first time, after such a long period of time. She had been in the hands of the Chinese for two and a half months.

But she was also all tensed up, after hearing from Audrey the full truth about what she'd gotten torn into, with Jack and this DoD mission.  
She didn't miss that worried glance in Audrey's look, that she threw at her, as she told Heller that she'd leave them alone for a few minutes.

Feeling uneasy, Teddy closed the door behind her and started to stroll down the corridor. Actually, she had no plan what to do now. Officially, it was her day off today, but she didn't want to go home, even though she slowly started to feel really tired.  
The things that Audrey had told her just wouldn't get out of her mind. She didn't want to go back home, into her empty apartment. Instead, she felt an almost desperate wish to go back in there and talk to that woman again.

She didn't even notice Owen, who had kept her in sight, ever since she'd left Audrey's room. Slowly he approached her. He was worried to find her so tired and so deeply drowned in thoughts. "Teddy?"

She looked up into his eyes.

"Are you really okay?" He was afraid that what had happened during the night was now starting to show its consequences.

"I'm okay.", she silently answered, "Just a little tired. I guess I'll lie down in one of the staff rooms and I'll be okay. It's seven hours until the night shift starts.", she sighed.

"You don't have to do this night shift.", he hurriedly said. He didn't want her to be here again, alone, just one night after the one when that maniac had kidnapped her. "I won't let you work tonight."

"Please, Owen", she began, already making her way over to the staff room. Funny, that it was exactly the room where she and Jack had spent the night. "I don't wanna go home and be there all alone. It'll just get my brain running wild all night." Of course her brain would be running wild. Of course it had something to do with Jack. But not in the way that Owen was thinking right now.

He felt like having to protect her, from herself. But right now, he didn't even know what was best for her. "Are you really sure?", he asked her again. He couldn't hide it any more, how worried he was about her, and he didn't want to hide it.

"Yes", she tried to put on a smile for him, "I'll be okay, just let me get some rest"

As he watched her disappear into the staff room, he made his decision: He'd have to stay as well. He couldn't leave her alone tonight.

* * *

Teddy closed the door behind her, relieved that she had succeeded in convincing Owen that she could do this night shift. She wanted to be here. The night shift was usually not so much filled with work and boring… she'd get the time to steal herself away from her other duties.

She looked at the bed, and at the chair next to it.  
Just a few hours ago, she'd been sitting there, watching Jack sleep.  
Slowly, she went over to it and lay down there, hoping to find something that would remind her of him… but no. Someone must have changed the covers during tidying the room. There was nothing of him left. No smell, nothing.  
She looked at the place right next to the cushion, where he'd put his gun, always in reach.  
It was of no use to him now. Heller's men took it away.

Lying here, her mind was even racing worse than before. Where was he? How badly had they hurt him? Was he still alive?  
She guessed that Audrey was lying her room, too, having just the same thoughts.

The thoughts didn't get any better.  
The longer she kept lying here, the worse they got. What he had told her, during the lonely nights, about how they had tortured him, got mixed up with the concerns in her head.  
She wanted to work again, just to be able to forget this all for a moment. But she knew that she was way too tired to be unleashed at a patient.

She really needed to sleep, not to fuck something up during the coming night shift.

To kill the thoughts, she grabbed the remote and switched on the TV, aimlessly switching through the channels to kill the boredom.

 _BREAKING NEWS - - - Container ship caught fire north of Port Angeles - - - Authorities warn residents of Port Angeles and Port Townsend to stay inside their houses and keep the windows closed until type of cargo is confirmed - - - Coastguard confirms several explosions on the ship - - -_

Teddy sat up in bed, staring at the screen. King 5 was showing pictures of an immensely large ship, painted orange, with big Chinese ideographs on its sides, taken from a helicopter. Columns of smoke rose from three points of the ship. The speaker was telling that they were afraid the ship would get disabled and adrift.

She shivered, pulling the blanket around her shoulders, already knowing that it wouldn't make it better.  
Spellbound, she stared at the pictures of the ship.  
And now she was sure, that she wouldn't get any sleep at all.

.

.

.

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 _Guys, this is really hard to write, somehow… when I write, I have a picture in my head of what is going on there – do you know how many times I got the names Teddy and Audrey mixed up? :-) damn it…  
_


	19. Chapter 19

_Enough of the action-filled chapters... back to GA..._

* * *

As Teddy unlocked the door to her apartment, her hands were still shaking.  
Owen had finally sent her home, after she had almost fucked up in the OR. She had been way too tired to start operating anyway. It had been a reckless decision to stay there, just because she thought she couldn't bear the silence at home and didn't want to leave Audrey alone.

In the afternoon, the burning ship had been towed to the harbor of Port Angeles, twenty miles north of Seattle. They seemed to have some engine problems which didn't allow to cross the Pacific Ocean without repairing things first.

No word of Jack. Had he survived on that burning vessel at all? Nobody knew, and finally she was thinking that nobody would ever know.

Audrey had implored Heller to send somebody to that ship, to help him, but he had officially declined. The Chinese, he said, would never agree to a prisoner exchange again if they'd snatch the people back who they had given to them before. His hands were tied.

Behind his back, they all shook their heads. He didn't want to help Jack, everyone knew that.  
Teddy realized that even Audrey was slowly giving up on trying to persuade him. But she was confined to her room, and there was not much what she could do.  
There had been no report of the coastguard. They hadn't found any body in the sea.

She had called all other hospitals in the area. Nobody who'd fit Jack's description had been delivered to any of them.

She switched on the light and went to her bedroom. Tiredly she collapsed onto the bed, the first time after she'd left it on the morning before, after sleeping here with Jack.  
She found the grey T-shirt that he'd been wearing – one of Henry's – and the sweatpants on the chair next to the bed. They had a magical pull on her. When she tiredly got up again, reminding herself that she should change into her pajamas, she couldn't help but put that grey T-shirt on which Jack had been wearing the night before.

It smelled like him.  
No, it smelled like Henry.

God, she missed them both.  
For a while, Teddy lay in bed, asking herself if she had gone completely crazy. There was no sense in denying that she'd fallen in love with Jack over the course of the past week. And yet she was facing his girlfriend that he'd always been talking about and who was so madly in love with… She had watched him go into a certain death for her, even helped him!  
It was plain silly to envy Audrey. Being with him was only trouble. Whoever was after him would always threaten his loved ones as well. That was why Heller was so protective of Audrey and why he wished to get rid of Jack for once and for all. She should be glad that his heart belonged to Audrey and not to her. But nevertheless, he had already torn her into these troubles, knee deep.

Cuddling into the shirt and into the sheets where they both had spent their nights, she finally fell asleep.  
And she didn't realize that her mobile phone, which she had switched to mute, rang, some hours later.

* * *

In the morning, she saw what she had missed: thirteen missed calls, most of them from work. Two more from Christina, one from Derek Shepherd.

She jumped out of bed, calling back, while she was already putting on her clothes, without even bothering to make the bed or breakfast.

A patient had been delivered to the hospital in the night, strong hypothermia.  
She didn't dare ask if it was Jack, although that was the only question in her mind as she raced to the hospital.

She ran all the way, to the locker room and change into her scrubs, and the whole way from there to the intensive care unit. As she pushed the door open, she found DoD agents standing at one of the doors to one of the rooms. Her wildest thoughts got confirmed in an instant.  
She was so out of breath from running that she couldn't have spoken a word.  
Owen and Christina just came out of the room.

When he found her standing there, he rushed over to her, pushing her back out of the ward. "You shouldn't be here, Teddy."

"I have 13 missed calls on my phone, Owen, I came here as fast as I could!", she almost shouted.

"They were wrong to call you, they didn't know that I had sent you home.", he explained, trying to push her further away.  
As he grabbed her arms, pushing her backwards, she saw that underneath his white coat, he wore a holster and a gun at his belt.

"Owen!", she called out his name in shock. "What are you doing?", she shouted, staring at the gun at his belt.

"I am protecting us all here, especially you!", he hissed, backing her against the wall. "The guy who threatened you yesterday night is in there. Heller's men brougt him here. I couldn't do anything against it. I would have thrown him out, Teddy", he said, almost apologetically, "but his shape was just too bad."

Teddy froze as she heard that. She looked past Owen, over at the doors to the ward.

"Teddy, calm down, he won't do anything to you.", he tried to soothe her, because he saw how torn she suddenly was. He was still a major of the armed forces, in the back of his mind, and he definitely _was_ allowed to carry that gun on him.

"What's wrong with him?", she stammered, even though was highly suspicious to ask that.

"Strong hypothermia and several other superficial wounds.", Owen said, hoping that his diagnosis would calm her down, "You're safe, Teddy. This time that guy won't be able to get up and run. And I'll make sure he's no threat to anyone. Everything's already coordinated with the guys from DoD."

She was still shocked to see him carrying a gun. The last time she'd seen him armed was in Baghdad, years ago. It suddenly felt like the war had caught up with them again.  
"Why did they call me then?"

"Christina wanted to reach you, she wanted to do a bypass and warm his blood externally to keep him alive.", he tried to explain, "She didn't know that it was _that_ guy and she didn't know about yesterday night."

Teddy couldn't have cared less about what he or Christina knew or didn't know. "Did she do it?"

"No", he shook his head, "The DoD agents ordered that no invasive techniques to be used. They wanted to keep him at least somehow transportable."

"Why do _they_ order what we should do?!", she almost shouted, "Are we the doctors or are they?!"

"Relax, Christina had it under control. He's almost back at 90°F and there were no complications yet." He sighed, adding, "And even if there were…" he didn't finish that sentence. The head of trauma surgery should not say anything like _if my patient dies I'm quite okay with it._

"Okay…", she silently breathed, walking a few steps away from him, "She can call me if she needs anything", she added and left him back alone.

Walking down the corridor, she knew that he would guard her 'from Jack'. Owen would always be around, keeping her from seeing him, because he was worried about her. And there was no way in which she could persuade him to let her through to Jack.

She couldn't help picture Christina, working on him.  
But she could picture her just so well, telling her that he hadn't made it, like she had told her, only five weeks ago, after losing Henry. _He's dead,_ she pictured her, saying, _Jack is dead_ , to speak the magical words aloud. She wiped the tears from her eyes that had unwillingly started to flow.  
And right now she prayed that Christina wouldn't lose another one of the men she loved.

* * *

She had refreshed her make-up and waited until the cried-out eyes had gone away, before she dared to go over to Audrey. Heller was here, and she couldn't allow him to get suspicious about her. What should she tell him, anyway? _I cried because I worry about your worst enemy?_

At least until she closed the door to Audrey's room, she held up her façade.

She had fooled Heller into believing that everything was okay as usual, but she couldn't fool Audrey. She saw it in the very first moment, that something was wrong, and that it could only have to do with Jack.

Audrey jumped out of bed and ran over to her.

"He's here.", Teddy breathed

"Alive?"

She nodded her head, slighty.

"Does dad know? He didn't tell me anything."

"His men brought him here." Teddy took a deep breath. "There were two guards watching his room, but I saw on the way here that now they're gone."

Audrey started pacing up and down in the room. The DoD agents had brought him here, but not to free him. Probably they only wanted to make sure that he couldn't flee from the Chinese – even if it meant presenting him to Cheng on a silver plate again.  
"You said that the agents left?", she asked. "When?"

"I don't know. Could be twenty minutes, could be an hour."

"They've left their posts so the Chinese can caputre him back.", she spoke it out loud what they both were thinking. "I can't let that happen."

The two women stared at each other.

"I don't know how to stop that from happening.", Teddy silently began, feeling endlessly sorry for saying it, "My boss here won't even let me go anywhere near him, because he still believes that he has to protect me from the men who abducted me. I can't give any orders to bring him away, to surgery, or to some other room or to another hospital…"

"Then I have to get him out.", Audrey cut off Teddy's excuses on why she couldn't help him. "I'm not going to lose him another time, after all we've been through."  
It hurt her to say these words, "If you ever loved him, then you have to help me now."

Teddy froze, as she heard that. "What…?"

Audrey slowly came closer. "You are too worried.", she began, "You wouldn't cry for a simple patient, or would you?", she breathed, "You fooled anyone around here, making them believe you cry because you're afraid of him. But you can't hide it from _me_. I've watched you for days now." She didn't really expect an answer, but yet she stood there as if she was waiting for one. Or at least an explanation. Or an apology?

"He only talked about _you_.", Teddy stammered, feeling threatened by the woman in front of her.

"Did that hurt you?"

Teddy wanted to rip the door open and run away. Yes. It had hurt her, a lot. Lying in his arms, knowing that he was only waiting to return to another woman. She didn't want to be here, she didn't want to have that conversation.  
But as she reached for the door handle, Audrey stopped her from doing it. "I know that you care about him, Dr. Altman", she whispered, "You don't even know what they are going to do to him when he falls into their hands again."

"As a matter of fact, I _know_.", she hissed back, "He lay on my OR table when he came here, and it didn't look nice what I saw." She never thought that she would say that, but this all was getting too much for her. She was standing between so many fronts, she had lied to so many people already, she couldn't put her head above the parapet any longer for him. "But I risked too much already, for nothing. I risked my job and my career when I decided not to let him die out on the streets!"

"Love makes us do the stupidest things", Audrey commented, still thinking about how they could help him. "Will he survive it if I bring him away from here?"

"Now that's a stupid thing." Teddy wanted to make an end to this conversation. Right now. She turned around to leave.

"Dr. Altman", Audrey called her back, "I just have to walk out there and tell my father about you and Jack."

Angrily Teddy turned around. She had never thought that she could be harsh or rough to a patient, but her feelings slowly started to overwhelm her. "Really?", she hissed, storming over to her. "What about if I tell your father what you told me? That you voluntarily handed yourself over to the Chinese just so the US government would agree to this exchange? That your plans would have tricked our government into losing their most valuable source of information?" Heated like she was, she wanted to keep going, even though she already saw that she had reached her goal, frightening Audrey to the bone. "They'd put you in jail for treason."

For a while, they stood in the room, looking at each other, knowing that they could both bring each other into deepest trouble.  
They had both risked a lot just to help Jack.

Teddy pushed herself away from the wall and went a few steps, over to the windows. "How could I have ever been so stupid", she said in a low voice, slightly shaking her head.

"Because you know it was the right thing to do." Audrey came over, watching her back. "You knew he would have died if you had followed the rules."

Teddy still shook her head. How could she only risk so much for a man who'd give her nothing in return but problems? Threatening her life? Tearing her into some agency-matters?  
She had silently fallen in love with him, even though he gave her nothing in return.

"If you turn your back on him now, he's gonna die.", Audrey silently spoke, "I saw the news about the ship. They will make him pay, they will keep him alive, they can prolong his suffering for years, if they want to."

A cold shiver ran down Teddy's spine. She had seen the wounds all over his body. Of course she knew what they were gonna do to him.

"If you ever felt something for him, then don't turn your back on him now.", Audrey repeated, and she repeated her question, "Will he survive it if I take him away from here?"

Slowly, Teddy turned around. "I don't know. He was brought here with severe hypothermia, probably he did jump off that ship, into the ice cold water, before it reached the port. He's in ICU, I don't even know if he's conscious at all. If you stress him too much, he could have a heart attack right away."

Audrey thought for a few moments, before she made her decision. "I'm willing to take that risk.", she said, "Give me your white coat."

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 _Please R &R... what do you think about these two women, fighting over Jack?_


	20. Chapter 20

_That's what you've all been waiting for... Jack/Audrey reunion..._

* * *

He hated to be lying here. Everything was cold, so cold. The only thought inside his head told him: it's so cold. Move. Otherwise you're gonna freeze to death.  
That thought hadn't left him, ever since he'd jumped off that ship.  
It had been a miracle that he managed to make them turn around. The plastic explosives had helped destroying the fuel injection of the ship's engine, making it slow to a crawl first. The three fires which he'd started were enough to distract most of the crew and even some of Cheng's men who feared to sink to the ocean's ground if they didn't fight the flames.  
But finally, after three hours of drifting around in the channel, finally being towed to Port Angeles, they had closed in on him. They had started to search the ship, systematically.  
He had pulled back to the stern, but he was sure that he'd not have any chance if they got too close. But the ship was still a mile away from the port. He had to jump, taking his chances.

Never in his whole life, he'd felt such coldness. The icy water was biting into his skin. It felt like a million cuts at the same time.  
He didn't even know how he finally reached the shore. The two life vests that he had put on kept him from drowning, but that was it. He remembered that a boat had come… and the next thing was already waking up here. At first, he had already thought that worst fears had become true: the doctor who leant over him, when he opened up his eyes looked Chinese. He couldn't move his hands or legs, they were tied to the table that he was lying on. He almost panicked, thinking that they had him in their custody again.

When finally another doctor came in here, he was partly relieved. That was the guy who he had seen here before, the blond one, the one that had operated on him, ten days ago, the one whose ID he had taken, to get to the pier.  
But that doctor didn't seem to care that much about him. He was rough, brusque and seemed to do only the most necessary things to keep him alive somehow. He was back in Seattle, he finally realized. But the fact that this doctor wore a hoster and gun at his belt, beneath the white coat, didn't really calm him down.

But that didn't make it better. Was he back in Heller's custody? Why had they cuffed his hands and legs to that table? As he looked, he saw that it weren't metal handcuffs, like the police used them. It were such leather buckles, like the ones they use in a mental institution.  
He couldn't move an inch and it frightened him to the bone. Why was Dr. Hunt – he could remember his name now – wearing a gun? That couldn't have gone unnoticed, he guessed. Maybe even Heller had allowed this ex-soldier to carry a firearm around him. It all made sense somehow.  
He didn't know what they had given him, but right now, he didn't even feel any pain, except for the coldness that still stung.  
Drifting from being awake off to sleep again, into unconsciousness and back to being half-awake, he lay there, awaiting his destiny.

As the door opened and someone came in, he weakly turned his head to see who it was. The unfriendly Chinese doctor again?

He saw it from far, that this was Teddy. He saw her wearing that scrub cab, with birds on it… he remembered her talking about it. She directly ran over to him.  
"Teddy…", he whispered, as she bowed down to him. He had a hard time keeping his eyes open. "Where's Audrey?", he managed to breathe, "Is she okay?"

Close to tears, she pulled her face mask down beneath her chin, hoping that he'd recognize her. She couldn't believe what she saw. He was in such a bad shape… she'd never seen anything like this. As she touched his face, and his shoulder, his skin felt ice-cold. "Jack…", she whispered his name.

She saw how he stirred, as he finally recognized her. The beeiping of the heart monitor speeded up in an instant.

"Audrey…", he stammered, seeing her face right next to his. "Are you okay?" It was all he wanted to know. As he had walked down the gangway, into the ship, he thought that he'd have seen for the last time in his whole life. But there she was, right here.

"I am.", she couldn't hold back her tears any longer, "but you're not." She didn even dare look at his body, covered with black and blue marks, the many lacerations and cuts, the many stitches. But even looking in his face wasn't that much better.

"doesn't matter." To him, it really didn't matter right now. She was safe, he had reached everything that he had wanted to reach.

"It does matter", she hurriedly said, looking back at the door over her shoulder. "Can you stand up?"

He didn't even know.  
As she unfastened the buckles around his legs and arms, he started to move his limbs again, for the first time since being dragged out of the water. It worked. It hurt. Everything hurt, even breathing.  
She took the oxygen mask off his face and helped him sit up. "You need to leave.", she told him, holding him by his upper arms, because she feared that he'd otherwise collapse to the table again. "They're gonna come looking for you. Dad'll hand you over again."

She only confirmed what he'd feared all the way. He had a hard time sitting there, while she grabbed two more white coats from a rack behind the door, handing them to him. When she helped him put them on, she saw the marks on his back for the first time. She almost lost ground.  
As she was still searching the trolly next to the bed for an epinephrine injection, he clumsily leant over and took one of the scalpels that lay there. He hated being unarmed, and even more being unarmed and in a miserable state of health.

"Teddy told me to give that to you.", she said, showing him the injection that she had finally found. "She said it'd get you going for ten to fifteen minutes."

"My car is still parked in the back.", he remembered.

"I know." She pulled the keys out of her pocket. Teddy had told her where to find them. In the crew room, where she had spent yesterday night with him.  
As he wanted to take the keys, he pulled her hand away. "I'll drive.", she remarked.

Worriedly, he looked up, into her eyes. "I won't let you ruin your life for me."

He obviously didn't know that it was way too late to say something like that. "I already made some decisions that I cannot make undone, Jack", she silently said, leaning over to him, grabbing his face with both her hands, "I will not let you ruin my life by just running away from me now."

Shocked to the bone, he stared at her. "Please, Audrey, go back….", he whispered. He didn't want her to run off with him. "You deserved a better life."

She didn't listen. Instead, she just gave him the epinephrine and almost tore him along with her, off the bed, hoping that he could walk, or even stand.  
He stumbled from the bed over to the wall, holding on to it.

Audrey put the face mask back on and looked outside, the corridor was empty. It was like the people from hospital had brought all the men and women away from this ward, away from here, because they knew that a military operation could go down here any minute now.

She dragged Jack along with her, having grabbed one of his arms. He left some bloody handprints at the wall, as he was forcing himself to keep going, over to the emergency staircase, which would mean freedom.

As they heard a noise behind them, they tried to take cover behind a doorframe, but it was already too late.  
Jack tore Audrey into the little recess, but Owen had already spotted them. It wasn't that hard to find them – after all, it seemed like they were the only three people in this ward, and a trace of bloody handprints on the wall could lead him always to them.

Jack grabbed the scalpel in his hand faster, as he saw Owen pull the gun out of its holster, aiming it at him. He wanted to shield Audrey from all this, but then again, he knew that they could only get out if they did the exact opposite thing.  
"Do you trust me?", he whispered into her ear, lying his left arm around her body. He glanced at Owen, coming closer. The little recess in the wall was just enough to take some cover now, but the closer that man came, the more desperate their situation would become.  
"What will you do?", she asked, and right now she didn't know who was trembling more, he, because of his body temperature or she because of fear.  
"Trust me. I love you.", he whispered, tonelessly, and then he grabbed her rudely and tore her out of their cover.

"Put your gun down or she's dead!", he roared, holding the scalpel right to her throat.

She shrieked, but it was not a fake.

Owen stood there, not knowing what to do. He had him at gunpoint, but he had Teddy… They were about ten yards away from each other.  
"Don't do anything stupid.", he remarked, but hesitated to put the gun down.

Jack started to yield backwards. Five more yards, and he'd reach the entrance to that staircase. If he could fool Teddy's friend for long enough, they could still make it. He just wasn't allowed to let him get any closer. From far, he wouldn't realize the difference between Audrey and Teddy. She was wearing Teddy's scrub cab, the one thing that Teddy would never give out of her hands… she was wearing a mask, covering the largest part of her face, rubber gloves… he couldn't know the difference.

"Put your gun down now!", he roard again. "Or she's dead."  
He hoped Audrey would forgive him for this, one day. She couldn't know that this man over there was probably Teddy's best friend, who would never shoot at her.

Owen stopped coming closer. "What do you want to do? There are DoD agents around her, everywhere! You are surrounded!", he shouted.

"Why did the guards leave my door, then?", Jack shouted back, "You're putting me on a silver plate for the Chinese again!" He was sure that Dr. Hunt had cuffed his hands and legs, not out of medical necessity, but because of getting orders from Heller.  
"I won't let them take me again!", he roared, feeling the adrenaline finally rush into his body. "I have nothing to lose, so put your gun down!"

Finally, Owen backed down. "Okay.", he said, showing the empty palm of his left hand. Slowly, he went to his knees, to lay the gun at the floor.  
Jack watched him.  
He saw how Owen looked past him, for a few moments. Hesitatingly, to find out if this wasn't a trick, Jack dared to look back, too. Through the windows at the doors to the station, he saw two black clothed men approach. "Chinese….", he tonelessly said, feeling his heart sink.

He tore Audrey with him, rushing forwards again, to hide behind a corner. Owen had seen the men, too. He grabbed his gun again and opened one of the doors to his right, to take cover.

Jack crouched down behind the corner. They were in a dead end corridor. Only two storage closets on both sides, and restrooms at the rear end. He was still holding Audrey in front of him, but right now, he would have actually just wanted to protect her somehow instead of using her as a fake hostage.  
His eyes found Owen's. From time to time, they both dared to sneak a peek at these men. They were searching the rooms just outside the doors to this part of the ward. Meanwhile, they had their weapons drawn.

"These are not our men.", Jack said to Owen, how had also crouched down, just opposite the hallway. "They're not coming to help you."

"Shut up.", Owen hissed, having another look at them. Meanwhile, even he had realized that something around here was horribly wrong.

"Give me your gun.", Jack pleaded. "I can get us out of here."

"No way."

"Why is nobody else but us here, huh?", Jack feverishly tried to make him understand Heller's game, "I guess you got order to evacuate this part of the building. From on high."

That Owen didn't answer anything but an astonished look, already answered his question.

"Why are you here, then?", he asked him, seeing that the Chinese had yet come closer. Not long until they'd be in this section of the corridor.

Just for a moment, Owen looked at Teddy. Or at the woman who he believed to be Teddy. He knew very well that he was the only person in this part of the hospital, besides Jack and her. Heller had ordered to evacuate. "Let her go and I'll give you the gun."

Jack shook his head _no._ "The moment I let her go you're gonna shoot at me, trying to be the hero."

"I won't. I promise.", Owen spoke. But he wasn't so sure what he would do. One shot, and Teddy could be safe.

"And I give you my word that Teddy will be fine when this all is over.", Jack told him, having a last look at the Chinese. "I give you my word.", he repeated, intensely.

Then the swinging doors got pushed open, and the two men were now in their part of the corridor, still searching the adjacent rooms one after the other.  
Jack slid a little bit away from the corner. Enemies closing in on all sides.

Owen dared to peek at them once more. He heard them now, they were talking Chinese. Right as he wanted to hide behind the wall again, the agent spotted him. He jumped back into the room, as a volley of shots dashed into the wall, right next to the place where he'd crouched before.  
Owen yielded back into the room, feverishly looking around. That room had no windows, and nowhere to go. He was trapped.

Through the still open door he saw Jack and Teddy on the other side of the corridor, they were almost unarmed.

Jack saw that look in his eyes. Pure horror and shock. He wasn't used to situation like these.  
As Owen laid the gun down on the floor, to slide it over to him, Jack finally let go of Audrey, telling her to hide in one of the storage rooms.

They still came closer. One guard was always keeping his gun aimed at the open door to the room where Owen was in.  
Jack slowly stood up and took the scalpel again. They had to work together now, to survive this.  
Owen hid in the shadows of the room, but he saw the man approach the corner behind which Jack was waiting for him. He seeemed to understand his signs, Owen realized, because he had straightened up and positioned himself to attack.  
He had to do something to keep this man from looking into the corridor to his right.

"I won't shoot!", Owen finally shouted, pulling the agent's full attention on him. "I give you my gun, I am unarmed!", he kept calling, and gave the gun a push.  
It slid out through the open door, so fast that it passed the agent and slid into the part of the corridor where Jack was hiding.

The agent didn't care that the gun slided past him. He was so fixed at Owen, who he believed to be the only target around here, that he kept on walking, his gun aimed at the open door.  
He forgot about his cover, and went on, right before Jack, who dashed forward, covered his mouth with one strong grasp and slid his throat. He hurriedly caught the agent's gun, before it slippled out of his hand and would have made some noise. There even was a silencer on that gun.

The two seconds, in which the second agent hadn't yet realized that his partner was dead were enough to kill him, too.

Jack stood in the middle of the corridor, looking at the two dead bodies at his feet. He didn't know them. They hadn't been on the ship, but they were Chinese agents, for sure.  
"Teddy?", he called, hoping that Audrey would follow along with his plan.

As she came out of hiding again, he slowly bent down, took a pair of handcuffs, which one of the agents had been wearing, and threw it over to Owen. "You cuff yourself.", he ordered.

Owen reluctantly caught the handcuffs. "You promised me to let Teddy go.", he remarked, but he didn't feel like arguing with the man holding a gun in his hands, who had just killed two others.

"I gave you my word that Teddy will be fine once this all is over.", Jack said to him, "Give me your phone and your pager."

Owen slid the two things across the floor, over to Jack. He didn't even care to pick them up. He just wanted to make sure that Owen couldn't contact anyone. "What parts of the building were evacuated?", he asked him.

"Just this ward.", Owen spat back at him, as he put on the handcuffs and cuffed himself to the radiator in the back of the room.

"I don't believe you." Jack rudely pulled Audrey closer and held the gun to her head. "How did they enter the building?", he asked again.

Owen just couldn't look at this. "They entered through the fire stairscase down the hall. There's an underground connection to the parking garage. Cameras are turned off on that route.", he hissed, "You're sick, man! Let her go!"

Jack finally lowered his gun. That man was no threat any more. He couldn't move and he couldn't contact anyone. "I gave you my word that I wouldn't harm her.", he silently said, walking a few steps over to him.

He could see so much hurt in Owen's eyes, when he looked at the woman who he believed to be Teddy and who he couldn't help any more, even though he believed her to be in life's danger. "I would never harm her", he silently added, hoping that this man would believe him.

After a few moments, Jack turned around and went off, taking her with him. He couldn't blow Audrey's cover. Not yet. Even though he felt sorry for the guy in there.

As he pulled the door closed behind him, he felt the effects of the epinephrine wear off. Tiredly he leant against the wall and put the gun away. His eyes met Audrey's. "I would never hurt _you_ ", he breathed, remembring how much she had trembled when he'd held the scalpel to her throat, "I'm so sorry."

She slowly came over to him, buring her face at his neck. She held him close for a few moments. "I trust you.", she whispered, lying her hands at his torso, feeling every breath he made.

He put his hands around her, pulling her closer. "I can't believe even believe you're here.", he breathed, holding her body just as tight as he could. She had been so far out of his reach, for years.

She affectionately ran her hand over his body. "I have to get you out of here", she whispered. "I won't give you away again." She finally straightened herself up again and helped him walk, tearing him away from the bloody mess of their past.

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	21. Chapter 21

Audrey knew that she had to let him get some rest. They'd been on the road for the past ten hours, and even though he'd been asleep on the back seats most of the time, the travel wasn't making him any better.  
They had gone south first, to Portland, where they had found a bank again to get some money from his numbered account. And then they had followed Columbia River, leading them inland, all the way to the Oregon/Idaho state border.

She took the keys to their motel room and went back to the car, where he was already waiting for her, wearing some clothes that she'd bought for him along the route. She was glad that it was dark now. She wouldn't want the man on the counter to see Jack's face.  
Slowly, she approached him, giving him a small kiss. "23", she said, "It's the room up there." She gave him another kiss, careful, not to hurt him. She didn't dare touch his black and swollen cheek.  
She grabbed the bag with their few things from the passenger seat and they slowly made their way upstairs.  
"Give me that" Jack took the heavy bag out of her hands.  
"You sure?" She couldn't hide that she was worried about his condition.  
"It won't kill me.", he reassured her, and gave her another kiss.

They went upstairs in silence. She unlocked their room in silence. They went in and he put the bag down, closing the door behind him, keeping her from switching on the light.  
Without any words, he just hugged her and held her cose.

"Jack?", she whispered his name into the dark. As an answer, he just held her tight.

"There are a thousand things which I'd like to tell you", he began, "but I can't find any words."  
He felt safe in the dark. She couldn't see how he looked like, she couldn't see the damages that his life had brought him. Sometimes, he was afraid that she'd only have to look at him to be reminded of everything bad in their lives.

She could almost read his mind.

Wordlessly, she pulled him along, over to the bed.

He saw it in the dark, how she pulled off her blouse. His eyes followed the beautiful contours of her body, only lit by a dim shadow.  
She lay down on the bed, stretching out her hand towards him. "Come here."

Slowly he leant down to her, not sure what she was up to.  
Her eyes hat that certain glance that was such a magical spell on him.

He found himself on his hands and knees, leaning over her to kiss her. After touching her lips with his, he pulled away again, looking into her eyes. His aching body was telling him not to go down that road. Not now. He just couldn't.

Understandingly, she ran her hand softly through his hair. "I just wanted you to remember how this feels like", she said, tentatively rising up to kiss him once again, "I missed you"

He kissed her mouth. Her cheek. The spot just beneath her ear, and then he let his lips brush over her throat , down to her chest. "I never forgot how this felt like", he tonelessly said, kissing her skin. This was what had kept him alive all the time. The though of returning to this place, just once more in his life.  
She could feel his lips, and his breath.

A few minutes later, he felt his arms and knees giving in. He fell asleep resting his head on her chest, hearing her heartbeat.  
She pulled the blanket over him, to keep him warm. And at some point, she fell asleep, too, even though she couldn't get enough of seeing him lie in her arms.

* * *

Teddy found herself sitting in a small, concrete room. CTU Seattle, she was told. Her hands were cuffed to the uncomfortable metal chair which she was sitting on. They had brought her here, five hours ago. And Owen was here as well, she had heard.

She hated herself for having let it come that far.  
Was it too late to tell Heller the truth? About her and Jack, that she had known him, that he hadn't really abducted her the night before? The truth about Audrey, that she hadn't been kidnapped by the Chinese but had given herself up voluntarily, to trick him into agreeing to that exchange?

The longer she thought about it, the clearer it got to her, that the truth would make her situation even worse than continuing to lie.

She hated herself for the decision that she'd made on that evening, a week ago, when Jack had come to her on the parking lot, asking for help. She should have let him rot there. She should have left him out in the cold, without any medical attention. Time would have solved all the problems that she had now.

As she looked at herself in the mirror on the other side of the room, she just knew that she would have always made the decision in the way she'd made it. She couldn't leave somebody to die. She always helped.  
She always paid the bill for helping them.

They had questioned her two times up to now. About how it could have happened that Audrey was gone. They were precise and thorough. They had taken a blood test to confirm that it had really been a tranquilizer shot, how she had passed out in Audrey's room.

She just hoped that they wouldn't use a polygraph on her. She could keep her secrets, she could hide the truth forever, if she wanted to, because she knew that it was best for her to hide it. But the polygraph would probably open open her up like a book.

As the door opened, she jerked.  
Two men came in, and Heller himself.

He told them to uncuff her. And then they left.

She was alone in the room, alone with him.  
Simply that frightened her to the bone.

"Dr. Altman", he began, "Captain", calling her by her rank that she'd had in the army. He sat down on the other chair, opposite her. "I am sorry that my men questioned you. But we had to get sure about your role in her disappearing." It hurt him to speak of Audrey like that.

"What role?", she breathed, massaging her wrists. "I already told them anything they wanted to know."

"I know.", he said, and put a file down on the table, sliding it over to her. "Read this."

Her hands were shaking, as she opened up the brown folder. It was Owen's statement. Reading through the lines, she almost turned pale. _He had seen her enter the closed evacuated part of the hospital. He had followed her, trying to make sure she'd be okay. He had found her and Jack, after he had taken her hostage again, threatening her with a scalpel. He had tried to shoot at him, until some foreign agents had appeared, almost killing him before Jack had taken them down. Jack had cuffed him up and had taken her with him, away from the hospital._

Shocked, she looked up into Heller's face. "I wasn't there", she shook her head.

"I know", he said again, taking the file back. "You were lying unconsciously in Audrey's room while she was impersonating _you_ to free this man." He took a deep breath and had a look at the file again. "And I have a big problem now, Dr. Altman."

"Which one?", she stammered.

"This man, who had assaulted you two days ago, is a rogue agent on the run from the Chinese government. He is still out there and they are still out there, trying to bring him down.", he sighed. He would be perfectly okay with this, if Audrey wasn't involved in it, too. "If you confirm the testimony of Major Hunt, I would be perfectly fine with this."

She couldn't say a word. Was he trying to convince her to give a false statement?

"Bauer took you hostage and released you after he had successfully fled the hospital. Major Hunt is a hero, by the way- he tried to save from all this.", he spoke.

"That's not the way how it happened…", Teddy stammered.

"Yes, I know." Heller stood up, and started to circle her. "If the Chinese government finds out that my daughter is accompanying him, they will not spare her life to catch him. They will use this to find him. They will use her as a bait, or any of her friends, her familiy…", he sighed, "I cannot change it any more that she ran off with him, based on probably some irrational romantic decision. But I can stop her from being targeted. Nodobdy will ever know that she went away with Bauer."  
He finally stopped circling her, looking directly into her eyes.

"I…", she stammered, "… how should I ever look into Owen's eyes again, making him believe that he saved my life and I wasn't even there?"

Heller knew that he had to persuade her somehow. "You earn 240 thousand Dollars a year, Dr. Altman. That's not much, compared to what you could earn with your qualifications."

She shuddered. Why the hell did he know about her paychecks? She was once more reminded of how much she hated having something to do with intelligence matters.

"I heard of that you contacted a regional office here in Seattle, two weeks ago, inquiring about re-enlisting", he continued. "I can offer you a position at MEDCOM. ON 12 paygrade."

Was he really offering to pay her for her false testimony?  
ON 12 paygrade was worth at least 330 grad per year.

"Think about it, Captain Altman", he put on a little smile, "There aren't gonna be that many officers there who I'd owe", he added, leaving the rest up to her. ON 12 was probably not the end. There could be more.

"I'll be back in a while." He left her alone, thinking. And he left Owen's testimony there, too, hoping that she'd use the time to get acquainted with the details of her newly discovered 'past'.

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 _Damnit, I really have to finish this now... should be writing my master thesis and not that stuff... but I can't fight it..._


	22. Chapter 22

It was not the early morning light, which woke him up. It was close to midday, when he stirred, feeling the warm rays of the sun touch the part of his back which wasn't covered by the blanket.

He opened his eyes and found himself still lying in Audrey's arms.  
It was a dream come true.

"Jack?", she silently asked, running her hand through his hair.

He didn't even want to move. "Yes?", he asked, running his hand softly across her belly. He saw his knuckles. They were bruised and red, like his fingers were. The more he moved, the more everything started to hurt again.

She asked him how he was.  
He didn't know what to answer. Should he just lie and say he was okay, like he always did? He was past that point. He didn't want to hide this from her, even though he actually wanted to be the one to protect her.

He slowly rose up from her chest, resting his weight on his arms. "I feel like hell. And I look like hell, for sure.", he answered. He wanted to stay honest. Whenever Teri had asked him, how he was, he had always lied to her, telling her he was okay, no matter what was really going on.  
He didn't want to play that game with Audrey.

She slid a bit closer, and softly grabbed his neck. It seemed like it was one of the spots where she didn't have to be afraid of hurting him, when she touched him. "Yes. And no.", she answered, smiling at him. "I like you just the way you are."

Slowly, he bent down and kissed her, picking up from where they had left off, the night before, kissing her throat, her chest, grabbing her bra with his teeth, implicitly telling her to take it off. She rolled over to let him open up the clasp.

He froze, as he saw her back. There were lash marks on her, not as many not as deep ones like he had them, but each one of the five dark red stripes was one too much. It was the first time that he saw them, now, in the daylight.

When she realized that he didn't open up her bra, she slightly turned her head, finding him staring. "Jack?", she asked. She needed a while to even realize what he was staring at. It was long since they had stopped to hurt… she had totally forgotten about them.

He couldn't stand that view. He felt the anger boiling, the anger at Cheng, at the system that had made him an outlaw, but above all anger at himself, for failing to protect her. "This is my fault…", he breathed, and every fear that he'd ever had seemed to come over him, "I ruined your life, Audrey." She had given everything up, when she had decided to run off with a pitiful creature like him.

"No, you didn't." She sat up, facing him. "There's nothing you could have changed."

"You went there because of me." He still heard Heller's voice, as he'd been talking to him on the phone, two days ago, getting the dressing-down of his life.

" _I_ went there. It was _my_ choice.", she hissed.

"I can't stand to see that you got hurt because of me.", he breathed, desperately fighting the tears. He wanted to make this all undone, to turn back time. Ever since he'd seen these five dark red stripes on her back, he couldn't get that picture out of his mind, seeing her in the place where he'd been.

"And what about me?", she almost shouted, grabbing him by his shoulders, even though she knew how much she'd hurt him with this. "Do you think I feel any better, seeing you like this?"

This had suddenly become one of the most honest talks they'd eved had. It nearly led to a fight.

For a minute, they both sat at the bed, staring at each other.

"I tell myself that I did anything I could to get you out of there.", she whispered. "And you did the same." The pictures of seeing him walk towards her, during that exchange, willing to go back into hell just to get her out of there, replayed in her head. "You wanted to go back into hell just to get me out of there.", she continued, softly stroking over the laceration at his right temple. "you _did_ go back to hell.", she added. He hadn't had that one, as she'd seen him walk towards the ship.  
She had seen that awful lot of hurts yesterday, when he'd been lying at that table in the ICU ward, half naked, in front of her.  
"I guess you didn't even hesitate", she tonelessly added.

"I would do anything for you.", he said. It didn't matter if going to hell or somewhere else.

"We have to learn to live with what happened to us, and what brought us here.", she whispered into his ear. "Can you do _that_ for me?"

Right now, he wasn't sure if that wasn't even harder than going back to hell. He hated to see the marks on her back. He could only imagine how she must feel, seeing him in the state that he was in.

"I am so sorry", he whispered, again and again, as she held him close.

"Stop saying that. There's nothing to be sorry for."

* * *

As she stood in this corridor, with its concrete walls and heartless metal doors, which made it look like a bunker, she was nervously waiting for the door on the other side to open up. Two guards finally came out, bringing Owen along with them.

She didn't know what to say at all.

He came over, close to tears, as he saw her, and hugged her. "Are you alright, Teddy?", his voice was shaking, as he said it.

"I am", she silently answered, feeling like a traitor. She had read his statement, back and forth, forty times, just so her answers would be in line with what he expected her to say.

"Teddy, when he held that gun to your head…", he sobbed, "… I felt so helpless. I wanted to protect you from that guy and I failed..."

She felt that he was crying now.  
"Are you gonna be okay? Are they gonna let you go?" She needed to make sure that would be okay, and not one more 'collateral damage' of what had happened around here.

"Yes, they have nothing to charge me with. I didn't do anything wrong." He took a few deep breaths. He'd had time during the past hours, to think about her, himself and anything. Being alone in that room, cuffed and condemned to stay there, with that picture in his head of seeing her being dragged away by this man,… he figured that there was no worse moment in his whole life.

He straightened up a little and made her look at him. "Teddy?"

She still hadn't said much. She didn't know what to say. Having agreed to Heller's offer had been the wrong thing to do. But she couldn't change it any more. With every other hour, she got deeper into the shit.  
Hesitatingly, she brought herself to look into his eyes.

"Teddy, I didn't realize it… until it was almost too late.", he began. Almost losing her had shaken him more than he'd have ever though. "I love you."

"What?!", was the only thing that escaped her lips, she didn't even realize how inappropriate it was as an answer.

She ripped herself free from him and ran away.

* * *

Jack asked himself why he felt so uncomfortable, getting undressed with Audrey being here as well. Why had it been so easy with Teddy, just a week ago? She had seen him naked as well. Had it been easier just because he hadn't seen her as a woman, but 'only' as a doctor, a professional, who had to do this?

Being here in the shower, with her, feeling her hands washing over him, softly enough not to hurt, was the best thing he'd felt in months, no years. His eyes closed, he stood there, letting her do with him whatever she wanted. He let the water run over his face, so she wouldn't see the tears that mixed with it.

What the hell was he crying about? No matter how much he wanted himself to stop, he just couldn't.  
Was it the memory of what they had done to him, whenever she softly placed a kiss one one of the marks on his battered body, and let the water run over it? Was it the memory, of getting hurt like that? No.  
Probably it was just the memory of being so helpless against it. He couldn't put it in words.

She made him turn around and carried on on his back. Washing the last traces of blood off, kissing and caressing each of the scars that they had left there. The water that ran down his legs, from his feet to the drain had been slightly colored red in the beginning. Not any more now.  
He leant his arms against the wall, staring at the cold white tiles. For the first time at all, it felt good to have someone taking care of him. He remembered almost freaking out when he'd felt Teddy's hands on his back, dressing his wounds.  
But now, feeling Audrey's hands, was different. He didn't ever want this to stop. When she was finished washing his back he silently asked her to continue. She hugged him from behind, letting the water wash over both of them.  
It was when he realized that the need to cry had finally stopped.

He screwed up all his courage and finally took the piece of soap out of her hands, turning around to her. Looking at her face only, he started to move the piece of soap over her skin, afraid to look down on her, for there could be something again, that he'd probably find.  
She was wordlessly telling him to get rid of his worries and do it.  
To make it easier for him, she even closed her eyes.

He ran the piece of soap over her throat and her chest, letting the water rush over it and kissing her wet skin. He bent down and kissed her breasts, one by one, after softly washing her skin, went to his knees and kissed her belly.  
Grabbing her by her hips, he slowly made her turn around. He had to face this, she was right. How should he be with her, when seeing her body would make him jump? When he was afraid of undressing her, for he could find something underneath her clothes that he didn't like to see there?  
In slow motions, he ran the piece of soap over the red marks on her skin. Kissing them, running his lips over them, embracing them as a part of what made them both who they were right now.  
He would have to talk to her about this, one day, he realized. About how she'd gotten them. And eventually, he'd have to tell her about his memories. They couldn't _not talk_ about this, letting it stay the big elephant in the room.  
He remembered the advice, that he'd given Teddy: talk about the past, even if it hurts, even if it is uncomfortable.

An hour later, they lay in bed together, naked, and in each other's arms. He screwed up all his courage, and started to talk, knowing that uncontrolled sobs would shake him and that it would feel like experiencing all the pain again.  
But there would be someone at his side this time, holding him as long as it would take to get better again.

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 _Enough now... J/A deserved a happy ending for a change.  
_ _Thanks for reading, please review! Thx, amacma_


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